Firmly gets $15 million to connect merchants to AI agents

Firmly, a startup in Seattle, got $15 million in a Series A round, with Squarepoint Capital as lead investor. The company connects merchants to AI shopping channels, and the merchant writes no code. Mastercard, Samsung NEXT and other investors also gave money. Firmly has at this time about $20 million in all.

How it works

Firmly Connect connects to the systems of the merchant one time. It then shows the catalog, the item pages and the checkout to each AI agent, marketplace or social network. The merchant stays merchant of record and keeps its payment provider and data.

The numbers

Firmly tells that first merchants of the new tool Ask Agent had conversion up by a maximum of 18%. Order value was up by a maximum of 23%. Ask Agent is a chat shop that a merchant adds with one line of code.

What is not known

Standards for agent purchases, such as the Universal Commerce Protocol of Google and Agent Connect of Mastercard, are new. There are some of them. Firmly tells that they are fragmented and slow to use.

Insight: Many standards make room for a middle layer

Shopify connects shops to 9 AI agents, and Mastercard started Agent Connect in September. Merchant groups work on the same rules for agent payments. This reads as a toll gate race: with no one standard, the firm that connects merchants one time can be between them and each agent. Mastercard backs Firmly, and this reads as a wish for more channels to Agent Connect.