A product search engine startup, Vetted, announced a US$14M Series A funding for its AI-powered platform for deals and product reviews. The cash infusion comes from a funding round led by Insight Partners and will be utilized in scaling Vetted’s machine learning technologies.
Stuart Kearney, a co-founder of Vetted, describes the platform as a search engine for discovering brands and products based on your requirements. He started the company along with Tim Etler and Tom Raleigh after realizing that online shopping had become an overwhelming customer experience.
Kearney said, “People shouldn’t have to spend hours sifting through indistinguishable products littered across thousands of ad-infested sites loaded with fake reviews and unreliable information.”
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This is where Vetted comes in handy. It surfaces reviews for a given product. These reviews are picked from platforms like Reddit, The New York Times Wirecutter, YouTube, and many other reliable sites. The platform also compares product prices across merchants, tracks changes, and alerts when there are sales or discounts. Vetted ranks these products based on 10,000+ factors, including reviewer credibility, brand reliability, past generations, etc.
Vetted is available on the web and as a browser extension. It stands apart from other product comparison tools like Honey by PayPal, Paribus, etc., because of its use of AI to identify products from different categories. Around 30 “product experts” work with the technology to analyze price changes or updates to ensure accurate results.