Augmodo raises $21M to push its local AI beyond retail toward physical workers – GeekWire
Augmodo, a Seattle startup that attaches AI-powered cameras to store employees to track store shelves, has raised $21 million as it pushes its technology into restaurants and warehouses, factories, and other physical workplaces.
The new funding, led by existing investor TQ Ventures, values Augmodo at $350 million.
CEO Ross Finman, who told GeekWire that he wasn’t even looking to raise new capital, said he was encouraged by interest in the startup’s technology from customers beyond retail, including automotive and hospital settings.
“In reality, the person holding a wrench in the auto industry is not that different from the person holding a box of Cheerios,” Finman said. “It turns out that algorithms work very well for all of them.”
Founded in 2023, Augmodo creates AI-powered “Smartbadges” – lightweight wearable devices with two cameras – that keep employees dressed as they move between aisles. The badges use computer vision, 3D mapping, and spatial computing to track shelf inventory in real time, creating what the company calls a digital “Realogram” for each store.
Augmodo raised $37.5 million last year in a round that came after Australian pharmacy Chemist Warehouse — its first major customer — moved from a pilot to a full contract and validated the technology at scale. Now some want to get in on the action.
“Our whole mission statement is AI systems for the physical workforce,” Finman said. “Everyone focuses on the 20% of workers who are knowledge workers, and we focus on the 80% of workers who are manual workers.”
That demand drew Augmodo into warehousing, facility maintenance, delivery, and even employee training — specifics the company wasn’t willing to provide. Existing warehouse customers, Finman said, continue to expand their contracts to cover new parts of their operations, from warehouse pallet inspection to logging repair work such as HVAC repairs.
The Smartbadge itself has already evolved, too. Finman said it’s now lighter than the iPhone Air and has grown into what he calls an “everything device,” adding walkie-talkie capabilities, a panic button, and a digital ID display, on top of its original inventory-tracking function.
“That’s actually become a big selling point,” said Finman. “You don’t need to buy five or six different devices, you buy one for the cost, and then you have all the different features you can get out of it.”
The company says it has grown 10x in revenue over the past year and now maps more than 186 million square feet of retail space every month — a figure it expects to cross 1 billion square feet per month by the end of the year. Augmodo adds 50 to 100 new store locations per month.
The company’s headcount has grown 5-fold in the past year to more than 50 employees, including new CTO Bradford Snow, who joined in January after previous stints at Axon, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft.
Augmodo was ranked No. 145 on the GeekWire 200 list of the Pacific Northwest’s top startups and was a finalist in the Hardware, Robotics, and Physical AI of the Year category at the 2026 GeekWire Awards.
In addition to TQ Ventures, backers include Lerer Hippeau, Jefferson River Capital, Arena Holdings, Chemist Warehouse, New Fare, Interlace, and Webb Investment Network.
Andrew Marks, founder of TQ, called Finman an “exceptional” leader and said every board meeting emphasized that the demand for Augmodo’s technology exceeded the team’s ability to service it.
“When you pair a really special innovator with customers who are lined up in the door and pulling you into new markets, it was clear that we had to propose putting more fuel on the fire,” Marks said.
Augmodo said it plans to use the new capital to expand its global reach, further invest in its core AI models, and grow its engineering team — with a greater focus on recruiting for computer vision and machine learning roles as the company scales data processing beyond retail.
