Loops AI, a startup developing AI-powered product discovery and shopping experiences for e-commerce, has closed a $3.5 million seed funding round. The round was led by a16z Speedrun, Andreessen Horowitz’s early-stage startup programme, with participation from NTT DOCOMO, Connecticut Innovations, Monday Capital, Alumni Ventures, and angel investors from companies including Netflix and Google.
Founded in 2025 by İlker Selim Zorluoğlu, Ari Nazir, and Yusuf Bahadır, the company currently works with brands including Mavi, Boyner, A101 Ekstra, and Petrol Ofisi in Turkey. The new capital will be used to expand product development and engineering capacity, scale customer deployments, and accelerate international expansion, with Japan as the first major target market, followed by Germany and broader Europe and Southeast Asia.
Moving the search box to natural language AI
Loops AI’s core technology allows users to describe what they are looking for in their own words rather than requiring them to know exact product names, navigate categories, or apply filters. The system processes the request against the brand’s product catalogue, product data, and business rules to return relevant options.
Co-founder Zorluoğlu described the technology: “When you walk into a store, you can tell a sales assistant: ‘I’m going to a business dinner tonight, I have navy trousers and I’m looking for a smart but comfortable shirt.’ With Loops AI, you can describe your need in the same way when shopping online. The system understands what you are looking for, evaluates it against the brand’s catalogue, product data and business rules, and finds the right options.”
The company applies its technology across AI-powered search and product discovery, shopping assistants, customer operations, product data enrichment, virtual try-on, and voice AI.
Purchase conversion 83% higher at A101 Ekstra
Loops AI measures the impact of its deployments through commercial metrics including product views, add-to-cart rates, purchases, conversion, and basket value. At A101 Ekstra, customers who engaged with the AI-powered product discovery experience showed purchase conversion 83% higher and add-to-cart rates 77% higher than the comparison group. At Wee Baby, average basket value was 11% higher, average spend per customer 26% higher, and 32% of customers made a purchase after their first query.
a16z Speedrun Partner Fareed Mosavat pointed to the company’s early results, noting that Loops AI had identified through its pilot deployments that brands need AI solutions capable of taking on customer journeys in an end-to-end way.
Global expansion ahead
Beyond retail and e-commerce, Loops AI is working to apply its infrastructure to financial services and energy. In the longer term, the company aims to build a shared infrastructure layer that allows enterprises to run their own data, systems, and workflows across different AI models and applications. The company is also developing specialised small language models for specific enterprise use cases. NTT DOCOMO’s presence among the investors is seen as strategically significant for the company’s planned entry into Japan.
