Retail Startups funded by Y Combinator (YC) in the San Francisco Bay Area 2025

January 2025

Browse 28 of the top Retail startups funded by Y Combinator. Headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, these are some of the hottest and fastest-growing startups.

We also have a Startup Directory where you can search through over 5,000 companies.

  • Presto
    Presto (s2010)Public • 200 employees • San Carlos, CA, USA
    Presto automates big chain restaurants like McDonald's, Starbucks, KFC, Chili's with a combination of Computer Vision, Voice AI, payments and advanced hw/sw solutions. We're obsessed with introducing next-gen tech to advance physical industries and delight consumers.
    food-service-robots-&-machines
    restaurant-tech
  • Fivestars
    Fivestars (w2011)Acquired • 201 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Fivestars is a leading payment and customer loyalty platform for small local businesses. Our mission is to help businesses and communities thrive by turning every transaction into a relationship. Since launching in 2011, Fivestars has become a rewarding platform with 60 million users discovering and driving sales to 14,000+ small businesses. We help drive over $3 billion in local sales per year. More than 1 million people sign up monthly to support the local businesses that make our neighborhoods great. The company is backed by Lightspeed, DCM, Menlo Ventures, HarbourVest, and others. Together, let’s #LoveLocal. Visit www.fivestars.com for more information.
    fintech
    marketplace
  • Faire
    Faire (w2017)Active • 900 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Faire is an innovative online marketplace that uses machine learning to match local retailers with the brands and products that uniquely fit their stores. We are using the power of technology to connect brands and independent retailers from all over the world, building a thriving community of hundreds of thousands of retailers, which has resulted in over 7 million new connections to date. Faire was founded on the belief that the future of retail is local. Our mission is to empower brands and retailers to strengthen the unique character of local communities. Our data-driven approach unburdens retailers from decades-old obstacles by helping find the right products for their shop. Plus, our straight-forward financial terms level the playing field by eliminating inventory risk and providing access to capital—key offerings previously only available to big box chains. For brands, our platform provides powerful sales, marketing, and analytics tools that simplify their business and allow them to focus on what they love: making great products.
    marketplace
    retail
  • 42
    42 (w2014)Active • San Francisco, CA, USA
    42 is an end-to-end analytics stack for DTC and wholesale brands. Our platform shows you the right insights and data, anytime you need them: - Hundreds of built-in metrics across Stores, eComm, Wholesale, or any other channel - See all your sales, stock and customer in one report, with images - Accurate cost, markdown and promo reporting - Get answers in real-time, during your buyer / supplier meetings - Get your store managers to use data, we've seen 10% margin increases from this - Actually know how much stock you have. We're more than just a dashboard... - No infrastructure needed. We do the hosting and maintenance. - No integrations (for you). We do the heavy-lifting and get your data into 42 - For brands, we work with all the major retailers (via xlsx, portals or EDI) - For retailers, we can be your vendor portal - We integrate with any system - We work with you to tailor the analytics according to your products and naming Our customers include AllSaints, Frasers Group, Incipio Group, Bandier, Deconic... and way more. If you want to learn more about what we do, head over to our website: 42technologies.com ... or go to any AllSaints store and ask a store manager :)
    saas
    analytics
    retail
  • Zinc
    Zinc (w2014)Active • 10 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Our team has built listing creation, inventory management, repricing, and fulfillment software currently used by tens of thousands of the top Amazon and eBay sellers. We power the entire product catalog for dozens of US and international e-commerce sites. Our founders and lead engineers hail from MIT and have worked at top-tier Silicon Valley companies including Palantir, Stripe, Dropbox, Nest, and Optimizely. Thousands of small business owners around the world make a living using Zinc's software. As the backbone of these online stores, Zinc's software powers hundreds of millions of dollars in annual sales. We offer an unconventional work environment focused on results, not hours. Zinc is backed by Y Combinator and some of the best angel investors in Silicon Valley, but we are also profitable and independent.
    e-commerce
  • Standard AI
    Standard AI (s2017)Active • 150 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Standard Cognition is an artificial intelligence platform that allows buyers to grab what they want without having to go to a cashier.
    retail-tech
    retail
    ai
  • Fleek
    Fleek (w2022)Active • 3 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Fleek is a B2B Wholesale Marketplace for second-hand fashion. Our buyers are vintage stores and online resellers; our suppliers are used clothing wholesalers, rag-houses, and donation centres.
    marketplace
    b2b
    e-commerce
  • Atomic
    Atomic (s2020)Active • 25 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    With our API any company that holds consumer deposits (e.g. savings apps) can easily embed professionally managed investment accounts into their services.
    artificial-intelligence
    fintech
  • Anakin
    Anakin (s2021)Active • 55 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Anakin is building a fully automated pricing engine for large eCommerce companies such as Walmart, and Uber. We help them increase their revenue by upto 12% by optimizing the pricing, products and trends data of their competitors. We do that by collecting data and generating actionable insights. Our pricing engine automatically changes the prices of hundreds of millions of products across 20+ countries in real-time. Anakin is profitable and growing every month with 15+ multi-billion-dollar companies as clients.
    saas
    b2b
    e-commerce
  • Eze
    Eze (w2020)Active • 32 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Eze is a B2B Marketplace that connects telecommunication and global electronic wholesalers allowing them to trade devices in wholesale quantities with real-time market data. Our aim is to formalize the fragmented and inefficient second-hand electronics market that had an estimated beachhead of $17 billion in 2016 which grew 50% from 2015. (Deloitte) Buyers and sellers use our platform to submit buy and sell requests. Eze automatically connects the two parties with compatible bids and executes the trade. The platform gives businesses real-time market prices and eliminates transaction risk by acting as an intermediary with a secure payment system.
    marketplace
    electronics
  • Talkable
    Talkable (w2011)Active • 76 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Talkable (formerly Curebit) helps online stores increase revenue through referrals by turning existing customers into marketers. When customers check out from a Talkable-enabled store, they are presented personalized deals that they can gift to their friends by posting to Facebook or forwarding a link. The deals give both the the original customer and their referred friends a rebate on their purchase at this store.
    e-commerce
    referrals
  • Meadow
    Meadow (w2015)Active • 14 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Headquartered in San Francisco since 2014, Meadow builds powerful Point of Sale and eCommerce software for retailers in the legal cannabis industry. Meadow’s all-in-one platform allows dispensaries to sell products, manage menus and inventory, reward customers, dispatch delivery and pick-up orders, and create exceptional in-store experiences for customers. Meadow powers dispensaries and delivery services of all sizes, utilizing technology to maintain compliance with local and state regulations, scale with the Adult Use market, and create operational efficiencies that allow these businesses to thrive in a regulated industry. Meadow’s team is dedicated to making the best retail software in cannabis, and to creating a more collaborative and inclusive legal cannabis industry. To learn more about Meadow, visit getmeadow.com.
    saas
    cannabis
  • Turing Labs Inc.
    Turing Labs Inc. (w2020)Active • 18 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Developing a consumer product like Dove is complex, time-consuming, and expensive; companies like Unilever analyzes millions of data points to develop a blockbuster consumer product. Turing makes this process 10x more efficient. Turing's AI harnesses the data from several sources and helps to make a better decision about product development 10x faster.
    b2b
    ai
  • StrideQ
    StrideQ (s2021)Active • 2 employees • Mountain View, CA, USA
    StrideQ (formerly SliceQ) is the automated phone ordering system for restaurants which ensures no missed calls and no missed orders. Surprisingly, 33% of restaurant customers still prefer ordering via phone calls, but front desk staff is often busy and revenue is lost. After enabling StrideQ our customers have increased their sales by over 10%, even while dealing with staff shortages in covid times. Phone ordering is our wedge to become the point of sale system for all restaurants. StrideQ also streamlines dine-in and online orders in one single system. It helps to run restaurants more easily by effectively managing operations during weekend peak rush.
    food-service-robots-&-machines
    saas
    e-commerce
  • Meitre
    Meitre (w2018)Active • 9 employees • Palo Alto, CA, USA
    Online reservations, guest and revenue management for the world's top restaurants.
    saas
    b2b
  • Mashgin
    Mashgin (w2015)Active • 75 employees • Palo Alto, CA, USA
    Mashgin creates better retail experiences through visual automation. We’ve built a self-checkout kiosk that uses computer vision to scan multiple items without barcodes, reducing checkout time by 10x. We’re completely recreating the checkout experience in an industry that’s had little innovation in decades. Our clients see dramatic reductions in lines and revenue increases of as much as 400% as a result.
    cashierless-checkout
    deep-learning
    hardware
    computer-vision
    ai
  • Seer
    Seer (w2021)Active • 4 employees • Menlo Park, CA, USA
    Seer helps retail salespeople create and send personalized shoppable Lookbooks to their customers via email and sms.
    saas
  • Vori
    Vori (w2020)Active • 29 employees • East Palo Alto, CA, USA
    Vori offers a modern operating system designed for the grocery industry. VoriOS helps independent and regional grocers streamline their inventory management, ordering, and supplier coordination, allowing them to operate more efficiently and profitably. The platform integrates real-time data to optimize stock replenishment and improve pricing strategies. Founded in 2019, Vori empowers grocers with technology that levels the playing field against larger retailers.
    grocery
    saas
    retail-tech
  • Semantics3
    Semantics3 (w2013)Acquired • 25 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Our products: - Data APIs/Feeds (Retail feeds, UPC lookups, Keyword search) - AI APIs (Categorization, Attribute extraction/NER, Matching) - Dashboards (Analytics reports, Price monitoring) We offer enterprise solutions for: - E-commerce Marketplaces (catalog generation & enrichment, seller on-boarding) - Logistics (HTS/tariff classification, attribute enrichment) - Brands (market share & trend reports, price monitoring)
    artificial-intelligence
    logistics
    e-commerce
  • Bizzy (w2015)Acquired • 2 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Bizzy is an automated marketing platform designed to boost sales for ecommerce shops. Bizzy is the first tool to centralize a business’ entire marketing portfolio around a single, dynamic set of customer data. As this centralized data updates based on customer behavior and marketing interactions, Bizzy adapts and executes a business'​ campaigns.
    e-commerce
    marketing
  • Eventjoy (w2014)Acquired • 2 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Eventjoy is a mobile-first ticketing company that is redefining how people organize and experience events. Organizers all around the world use Eventjoy to plan everything from conferences to happy hours. They're building technology to make event organizing a breeze, with a focus on mobile to enhance the event day experience.
    ticketing
  • 500Friends (w2010)Acquired • 51 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Merkle Loyalty Solutions, formerly 500friends, is a leader in customer loyalty marketing solutions. Clients depend on us to help them develop and execute a differentiated and impactful customer loyalty strategy that delivers the business results they expect. Merkle Loyalty Solutions is recognized by Forrester Research as a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave™: Customer Loyalty Solutions, Q3 2017, and as a Leader and received the highest overall score in The Forrester Wave™: Customer Loyalty Solutions For Midsize Organizations, Q1 2016. The end-to-end loyalty services Merkle Loyalty Solutions offer include: - Strategic consulting - SaaS loyalty platform named LoyaltyPlus™ - Platform integration - Program management and support - Advanced analytics Merkle is a leading data-driven, technology-enabled, global performance marketing agency that specializes in the delivery of unique, personalized customer experiences across platforms and devices. The agency’s heritage in data, technology, and analytics forms the foundation for its unmatched skills in understanding consumer insights that drive people-based marketing strategies. With more than 4,100 employees, the Merkle team is based in Columbia, MD, with 16 additional offices in the US and 8 offices in Europe and Asia. In 2016, the agency joined the Dentsu Aegis Network. Learn more about Merkle Loyalty Solutions at www.500friends.com. --- We're hiring! Please check out our openings at: www.500friends.com/who-we-are/careers
    marketing
  • AutoHub (s2017)Acquired • 2 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    AutoHub is a marketplace for automotive wholesale transactions. AutoHub is a transparent, efficient, convenient and cost-efficient digital auction platform.
    diagnostics
    automotive
  • Two Tap (w2014)Acquired • 11 employees • San Francisco, CA, USA
    Two Tap is the first e-commerce gateway built to make online shopping experiences seamless across the entire web. Its robust platform, which incorporates a set of intelligence tools, eliminates the friction caused by today’s multi-channel path to purchase. With Two Tap, shoppers can order products from retailers, directly inside apps and across all devices and operating systems without lengthy checkout processes. For publishers and mobile app developers, Two Tap offers a single API that sets new reliability standards with a guarantee to never lose an order. Founded in 2012 with headquarters in San Francisco, Two Tap is a Y Combinator company backed by Khosla Ventures, Green Visor Capital, Initialized Capital, SV Angel, Digital Garage and Transmedia Capital. For more information, please visit https://twotap.com/ and follow @TwoTapBuy.
    e-commerce
    retail
  • TalkBin (w2011)Acquired0 • Mountain View, CA, USA
    Acquired by Google, integrated natively into Google Maps.
    messaging
    customer-service
  • Mertado (w2010)Acquired • 1 employees • Redwood City, CA, USA
    Mertado Mertado is an online social shopping platform that allows consumers to discover and buy products from communities they frequently visit.