Former Bolt CEO Maju Kuruvilla’s startup triples to $100M valuation

Summary

Spangle, an AI e-commerce startup founded by former Bolt CEO Maju Kuruvilla, has raised $15 million in a new funding round, valuing the company at $100 million after the investment. Led by NewRoad Capital Partners, the all-equity Series A round comes over a year after the Seattle-based startup raised a $6 million seed round at a $30 million pre-money valuation. Madrona, DNX Ventures, Streamlined Ventures, and strategic angel investors also participated, bringing total funding to $21 million, according to the startup. Retailers are facing changes in how consumers discover products online, as AI tools, social platforms, and recommendation engines increasingly influence buying decisions before shoppers reach a brand’s website. Kuruvilla (pictured above) aims to address this with Spangle — positioning it as software that helps retailers personalize shopping experiences based on that context as shoppers move through their sites, using real-time, AI-generated product recommendations and layouts. Since emerging from stealth in March of last year, Spangle has signed nine enterprise customers, including fashion retailers Revolve, Alexander Wang, and Steve Madden, whose combined online sales total about $3.8 billion, Kuruvilla said in an interview. Traffic flowing through Spangle’s platform has grown about 57% month-on-month, with all customers expanding their use of the software, and the startup said it quadrupled its annualized revenue in the fourth quarter, though it did not disclose revenue figures. At the core of Spangle’s approach is a simple idea: instead of sending shoppers to pre-built product or category pages, brands route traffic to what is essentially a blank page. Spangle’s AI fills that page in real time using a proprietary model called ProductGPT, drawing on signals such as where the shopper came from, what they searched for or clicked on, and how similar visitors have behaved, to surface products, recommendations, and content tailored to that moment. Image Cr...