Baidu Ventures joins Series B for China retail AI player

Guopeng Capital, which invested $6.7 million in March, led the round alongside Mobai Capital. Kinzon Capital and Fengshion Capital also contributed. Baidu Ventures also participated in two earlier rounds.

Founded in 2017 as YI Tunnel, SandStar offers a suite of AI and computer vision-enabled retail products, including vending machines, checkout machines, unmanned store systems, and smart store analysis services that process offline data in retail situations. The company has operations in 11 countries and a team of more than 220 technology professionals.

"SandStar will be a future unicorn in AI retail," Kun He, a partner at Guopeng, said in a statement. "It truly provides cutting-edge technology with huge potential.”

The start-up says its computer vision technology can recognize 30,000 distinct products, or stock keeping units, with an accuracy rate of 99.7%. It also claims significant advantages in cost of installation. SandStar’s unmanned store systems are said to cost only 5% the price of a similar Amazon Go outlet. Its vending machines are estimated to be about 40% cheaper than traditional models.

Retail automation in China has been a popular category for private equity and venture capital investors. Recent activity includes an $11 million Series A for Clobotics, and Series B rounds of undisclosed size for Cloudwalk and Citybox. Last month, smart vending machine supplier Ubox raised about $226 million from a group including Alibaba Group affiliate Ant Financial.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Consumer
• Technology
• Early-stage
• China
• Baidu
• manufacturing
• artificial intelligence