Onton is accelerating its mission to cut the 79-day shopping journey to under a day with its neurosymbolic AI engine, now helping over 2M monthly users find trusted products instantly.
Shopping has quietly become one of the hardest problems on the internet. People spend a collective lifetime moving between tabs, filtering through over-SEO’d listings, comparing conflicting reviews, and trying to work out what is real and what is marketing. The average person takes 79 days to make a single purchase decision, and the number is growing. Onton was built to reset this experience by making every decision as informed as asking an expert and as easy as asking a friend.
Onton has now raised $7.5 million in seed funding led by Footwork with participation from Liquid 2, Parable Ventures, 43, and others, bringing its total funding to approximately $10 million. The company will use the capital to expand its product, scale its team, and grow its global footprint as demand for trustworthy, intelligent search accelerates.
AI Authority Trend: Jiga Raises $12 Million Series A to Accelerate AI-Driven Hardware Sourcing
The timing is significant. Traditional e-commerce is struggling under the weight of unstructured data and models that were never designed for the volume or complexity of information the modern web produces. Existing search engines rely on keyword matching, outdated filters, or advertising incentives that often push relevance to the background. Onton combines a new interface with a novel neurosymbolic AI foundation that learns more about the world with every search, dramatically increasing accuracy and enabling people to move from discovery to decision in minutes.
“We are building the future of decision making online,” said Zach Hudson, CEO and Co-Founder of Onton. “People deserve a way to shop that feels intelligent, transparent, and effortless. Onton is designed to remove the friction that slows everyone down and to give users absolute confidence in their choices.”
Onton allows users to search with natural language, images, or both. It aggregates information from across the web into a single product listing so people do not have to bounce across twelve sites to feel confident in what they choose. With new creative tools like Imagine and Surfaces, users can dream up the pieces they want and instantly see shoppable versions of those ideas. Onton is already delivering a conversion rate three times higher than the industry benchmark, and over 20% of users are weekly active.
The company’s momentum has been fueled by a clear need and a long list of shared frustrations. Alex, Onton’s co-founder, spent 30 hours looking for a mid-century gray couch with wood trim and realized everyone around him had been through similar pain. Zach had been building Rcmmd and studying trust in online reviews for years. When the two met at a YC Startup School event, they recognized they were approaching the same problem from different angles. They teamed up, built the earliest versions of the product, won Pioneer, were accepted into the fifth On Deck Fellowship, and began scaling what would become Onton. The team scaled monthly active users to over 1 million with just four employees at the start of 202,5, to ten today and expects to add five more soon.
Across the industry, the forces shaping shopping are shifting fast. The internet is filled with unverified, automatically generated content and the burden is landing on consumers to separate signal from noise. Brands are becoming walled gardens; long-trusted sources for product recommendations are disappearing. At the same time, people are rapidly adopting AI first interfaces and expecting search to behave more like an intelligent assistant than a filterable list. These shifts are reshaping expectations for relevance, accuracy, and trust.
Onton’s users describe the impact directly. One recently explained that Onton helped him find quality products that matched his passions without wasting hours on research. Another said the platform confirmed that items she was considering were truly unique, giving her the confidence to move forward instead of continuing to shop endlessly. Others shared that Onton cut months off their decision cycles and helped them restyle or furnish their homes with products they could immediately purchase. Power users are doing over 100 searches and generating a month.
Looking ahead, Onton plans to expand beyond home decor and furniture into new categories like apparel and electronics, guided by the demand it already sees from users. The company will continue refining its knowledge graph, scaling its data pipeline, and preparing to introduce a customizable search engine that adapts to each individual. Over time, Onton aims to become a global decision-making tool that supports any product, in any category, in any country
AI Authority Trend: GetVocal Raises $26 Million for Trustworthy Conversational AI Agents
Why This Announcement Matters
Online shopping is causing a lot of problems – Onton is the one who is solving it. Consumers are simply drowned by unverified listings, SEO noise, and conflicting reviews, and as a result, the average time of their decision for only one purchase is 79 days. Onton changes that path to less than a day, thus giving shoppers clarity and confidence right from the beginning.
A completely new AI base, which is created for decisions, not ads. In contrast to keyword search and ad-driven rankings, Onton’s neurosymbolic AI deals with real product attributes and user intent – thus, the answers given are more like an expert guiding you than just a list of links.
The user signals to the consumer platform indicate a market turning point. Onton is on its way to success, evidenced by more than 2 million monthly users, 20% of weekly active users, and conversion rates that are three times higher than normal benchmarks. The company has demonstrated that customers are seeking a smarter, trusted way to shop.
Intelligent search is what venture capital is betting on. The seed round of $7.5M (approximately total funding of $10M) is going to be a major factor in product expansion, global reach, and AI continuing breakthroughs – all these moves show that the investors are very confident that Onton will reshape the future of commerce.
Preparing the world’s first shopping engine that is completely personalized. Onton is not only fast-moving to cover areas like home décor, apparel, and electronics but is also very clear about its long-term vision of becoming a worldwide platform that helps each individual and every category make decisions.
AI Authority Trend: PowerLattice Raises $25 Million to Break the AI Power Wall
FAQs
1. What problem is Onton solving?
With people online shopping more than ever, the whole process has gotten so complicated that, on average, a consumer takes 79 days to decide on a single purchase. Onton is simplifying this process by giving users a mode of shopping which is as informed as consulting an expert and as simple as asking a friend.
2. What makes Onton different from traditional search engines and e-commerce platforms?
Onton is not dependent on keywords or ads. Its neurosymbolic AI roots continually discover new products and user intents, thus gathering trustable information from everywhere on the internet and offers it in one single correct product listing.
3. How is Onton able to achieve dramatically higher conversion rates?
They do it by completely cutting down the time for research, removing the misinformation, and providing trust in each and every result. Hence, users quickly find what they want, become more confident in their choices, and are saved from the hassle of comparing prices on different websites, thus resulting in 3× higher conversions than industry benchmarks.
4. How will the new funding be used?
With this $7.5M seed round, Onton will be able to expand its product, hire more people, and go global. It means not only scaling up the knowledge graph, perfecting the data systems but also moving into new verticals such as Apparel and Electronics.
5. What is Onton’s long-term vision?
Onton is dreaming of laying the foundations of an intelligent decision-making engine, capable of helping anyone find and buy the right product in any category, any format, and any country via a fully adaptive and personalized AI search experience.
AI Authority Trend: Albatross Raises €10.5 Million to Reinvent Real-Time Product Discovery
To share your insights, please write to us at info@intentamplify.com
