The vision of AR is clear, and Ross Finman, CEO and Founder of Augmodo, the real-time inventory and task tracker using spatial AI to improve efficiency and convenience for retailers, brands and consumers, focuses on the fuzzy middle ground of how we get there. He’s an entrepreneur who works across computer vision & AR hardware tech, supply chains, business strategy, and whatever else is needed to build teams and ship products.

When Ross and his wife went hunting for baby formula during the critical shortage in 2022, they ended up driving around the entire Seattle area looking for a retailer that had it in stock. It was then that Ross had the idea for his next startup – Augmodo uses spatial AI computing, computer vision, real time 3D store maps and other innovative tech to solve problems around accurate shelf inventory, cutting costs for retailers, brands and customers. Ross, an entrepreneur at heart who was homeschooled as he grew up on a llama farm in Idaho with his brother, has enjoyed a successful career in robotics and AR. He graduated from undergrad at Carnegie Melon University, then went on to earn his master’s and PhD at MIT.

We believe Augmodo adds two years of experience to every retail associate so as soon as they start, they “know” where products are, the pitfalls of the store, etc.

His first startup, Escher Reality, was part of Y Combinator’s 2017 class. A year later, Escher was acquired by Niantic Labs, creators of the location-based game “Pokémon Go.” He’s passionate about bringing AR to the masses, thus bringing humanity one step closer to his 6-year-old childhood dream of robots cleaning rooms.

Who is Augmodo and what do you do?

Overstocks, out-of-stocks and returns total millions in lost sales globally, an issue for both retailers and brands. Augmodo’s innovative tech builds AI-aided live, 3D maps of retailers, updated dozens of times daily, automatically scanning stores and building real-time planograms. It helps address pain points including inventory, efficiency, out of stocks, compliance with setting shelves up correctly, pricing compliance and helps with employee training, building an augmented workforce.

Augmodo’s real-time spatial AI assistant helps retailers deliver exceptional service. Retail associates have a tough job, and Augmodo makes their lives easier by helping save time, track inventory and collect shelf data, cutting down tedious tasks without requiring additional training. Associates simply walk the aisles as they normally do with wearable SmartBadges, as the store is scanned for them.

What is spatial computing? And what are some examples of how the technology is currently being used?

Spatial computing is digitization of activities involving people, computers, machines and environments to optimize actions – computing that brings digital experiences to the real world, including visual search that can connect digital things to the real world, so that consumers perceive the experiences as taking place in the real world. A good example of how it’s used is Pokémon Go, which is near and dear to my heart. My first startup, Escher Reality, was part of Y Combinator’s 2017 class and acquired by Niantic Labs, where we created the location-based game “Pokémon Go – fulfilling fans’ desires to bring Pokémon to the real world. You can have Pikachu interact with a bench in the real world, merging digital and real world experiences.

Spatial computing is also used a lot in training – e.g. surgeons can train students to perform surgery, manufacturing training can show where certain parts go. With Augmodo, we can perform inventory count, tracking products across supply chains in large, physical retailers, building better, more accurate shelf inventory, which in turn helps retailers and brands save millions of dollars in auditing and stocking errors.

How can spatial AI computing, computer vision, real time 3D store maps and other innovative tech benefit retailers, brands and customers?

Augmodo’s SmartBadges help associates by passively scanning for inventory and shelf conditions while associates do their normal jobs. The SmartBadges have built-in cameras, so that while an associate may be picking a curbside pickup order, we can see most of the aisle just from them walking by.

Our devices are there to help associates with their tasks and improve store conditions. If products are not on the shelf, or worse, are on the shelf and not found, those are lost sales that may take days or even weeks to address through data science models on ordering – rather than within minutes of any associate walking by. It helps prevent out of stocks, lost sales, consumer engagement and branding – if something is out of stock, marketing dollars go to competitors or are wasted. It’s also expensive to send people out to stores physically.

Furthermore, for the brands, it costs a lot to send someone out to audit stores, when those people should be executing and pulling out product. It helps improve shopping experiences by reducing substitutions for ecomm, and providing associates more time to work with customers. A local store of mine had a sale on lobster, and I ordered everything for a lobster dinner for curbside pickup and I got everything but the lobster.

The SmartBadge is the first wearable, AI-enabled inventory device for retail store associates. Tell us about the SmartBadge’s origins and progress so far.

Our SmartBadge origins came from my background at Niantic, where I worked with Augmented Reality wearables, specifically smartglasses. I spent years building massive, crowdsourced maps of the world with tens of millions of Pokemon Go players, and became convinced that retail, which has the largest physical workforce and data problems, would be disrupted by AR. We quickly learned SmartBadges were easier for customers to adopt – it was a great sign from customers when they told us, “It’s just so obvious.” We saw that customers could have immediate value today while building the roadmap for augmenting their entire workforce, adding two years of experience to everyone on day one. There is even the prospect of changing how consumer shopping will be done in the future in-stores with big tech smartglasses.

Augmodo is transforming the way retail floor operations are executed. Thus far, how has the retail industry responded to you?

We’ve been pleasantly surprised at how receptive retailers are. There are a lot of CV solutions out there, but we’re the first to do it from a wearable camera perspective. The nice thing is that we have a very low capital expenditure – Augmodo requires no operational changes, we’re just leveraging retailers’ existing workforce, making associates more valuable without changing anything. Most of our sales funnel has been inbound, so we feel very fortunate as we continue to expand both domestically and internationally. We’re scaling to hundreds of stores in the next year, with both brands and retailers, and to more than a thousand in the next 18 months, growing retail channels, geographies, speed, and scale.

You just raised your Series A – a big milestone for you and the team. What made you raise now?

We’re thrilled to announce the close of our $37.5M Series A funding round, which was led by TQ Ventures, with participation from existing investors Lerer Hippeau, NewFare, WIN and Interlace, who joined new investors Arena Holdings – an investment firm founded by Feroz Dewan, former Managing Director at Tiger Global, as well as Jefferson River Capital – the family office of Tony James, former President and COO of Blackstone Group.

We have a majority of our seed funding still in the bank, but due to the massive amount of inbound leads, we literally did not have the bandwidth to support half of them and, of course, wanted to capture and serve all of this exciting demand. We needed to raise now so we can scale our tech to handle the inbounds because the retail industry is massive. But these are good problems to have – we feel fortunate and excited about all that’s to come.

You’ve been building tech to map the physical world for your entire career. Why is this moment in AI capabilities enabling a turning point? What’s ahead for this industry that others aren’t yet seeing?

Wearable tech is now being adopted in serious numbers and AI tech is getting good enough to work in the real world now. Smartglasses are now selling in the millions, and the AI chips working on mobile and soon wearable devices are exceptionally powerful. It is exciting to see so much being developed so fast. What most people in tech do not see is the huge real world industries that can benefit from all the AI tech today.

Everyone is talking about AI agents replacing knowledge workers, but Spatial AI is going to augment the physical workforce to make them more valuable. Even enhancing in-store consumer shopping on future smartglasses – imagine never having to search for a product on your shopping list again or having to read the fine print to look for a gluten allergy on every product. The AI industry focuses on tech and data, but in the real world, that manifests as enhancing people.

What role do you envision augmented technology playing in the physical retail space in the future?

As an assistant for people, creating an augmented workforce that does not replace people, but enhances their roles. We believe Augmodo adds two years of experience to every retail associate – so as soon as they start, they “know” where products are, the pitfalls of the store, etc. Our data is going through and they’re getting real-time notifications to help them be even better at their job.

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