WHAT'S NEXT: Learn how Ammar Safdari, CTO of Claros, built an AI personal shopping assistant that brands will soon be able to integrate into their websites as a 24/7 AI salesperson.
What is Claros?
Claros is an AI personal shopping assistant that helps you find better products online faster. It performs research on your behalf and presents that research to you along with a set of personalized product recommendations. You can then talk with the assistant to further refine the recommendations.
Are you funded?
Yes, we're funded. Pre-seed, raising seed now.
Who do you serve?
Our company serves online shoppers who prefer a faster, easier, and decluttered shopping experience augmented with AI.
What's standout about Claros?
We’ve taken an AI-first approach to shopping to give every person their very own shopping assistant. We emulate the experience of talking to an experienced salesperson, who guides you to the right buy.
What's next at Claros?
We are working on letting the shopping assistant authorize payments. The agent would be able to call an API with a trusted wallet provider and complete checkouts all within Claros. That last mile of the shopping flow, where many user’s end up abandoning cart for a variety of reasons, can be completed seamlessly, leading to higher conversions. This would essentially enable any shopper to research, talk about, and buy products all in one place with their AI shopping assistant.
We are also looking to grow our b2b arm and integrate Claros with brand websites, so it can become that brand’s designated shopping assistant or salesperson. Many e-com websites still have a subpar search and chatbot experience that is holding them back from achieving higher sales. Claros can be a plug and play solution to grow sales and customer engagement with AI.
Geographically, the great thing about LLMs is that they are multilingual, so Claros works great in most other countries too.
What's next in your niche?
As voice models, text models, and AR/VR all converge, I can envision perfectly replicating the in-store salesperson experience with the knowledge, appearance, and voice of a real person. AI + VR will be an amazing combo and will be a huge selling point for shopping in VR. The ability to instantaneously talk with a shopping expert for any store or talk with your very own shopping assistant could drive huge sales across ecommerce.
Virtual try on in augmented reality will become more standard across stores and will even be available in a desktop browser with access to the computer camera. I also predict that ecommerce websites will become personalized to customers with targeted descriptions, relevant reviews, and prices dynamically adjusting to optimize profits.
Who should I interview next?
What's one thing the public doesn't know about your professional background that has led you to this point in your career?
Buildspace, an online accelerator, has been very instrumental in helping me pursue my ideas. Their month long programs, which they called “seasons”, helped show me how much could be done with a month of focused work. They now have tens of thousands of participants, but I hope they only continue to get bigger.
I wish more people payed attention to the future on larger timescales (say 50-100 years). If you pay attention to the future and you know what you want it to be like, it gives you a lot of clarity for what you should be doing now.
What's one thing you wish more people paid attention to in the world?
That and maybe ultimate frisbee as a legitimate professional sport.