Three former Spotify engineers who built the streaming service's Vector AI recommendation system have raised $10 million in seed funding for Malachyte, a startup applying the same technology to online shopping. The company argues that most e-commerce sites still personalise based on stale purchase history or demographic data, leaving first-time visitors with generic storefronts and returning customers with recommendations that ignore what they actually want right now.

Malachyte's "two-headed Vector AI" builds a real-time profile of a shopper's intent from the moment a page loads, using signals such as clicks, hovers, searches and device context to reorder products within a single session, without requiring an account or purchase history. Founded by Sidd Motwani, Ian Anderson and Shivaditya Sinha, the company has tested its technology since 2024 with over 20 enterprise clients, launched with Fun.com in autumn 2025, and has been generally available to Shopify merchants since June 2026, with larger retailers integrating via API. The seed round was co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Gradient, with participation from Harpoon Ventures, and will fund distribution and hiring.