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RECAP: 🛍️ AI For Retail, Santa Monica

What a day! The CXO Insights event in Santa Monica was more than just another industry meetup—it was a convergence of retail leaders, AI innovators, and forward-thinkers looking to redefine the future of retai

AI is Reshaping Retail—And Fast

The event kicked off with a compelling keynote from Greg Merrill, who drove home the key expectation of modern consumers: retailers need to know them, anticipate their needs, and deliver with unprecedented speed. AI is no longer a futuristic concept; it’s the driving force behind hyper-personalized shopping experiences, real-time supply chain optimizations, and fully automated retail ecosystems.

Our panel discussion featuring Lisa Yu, Billy Zajac, Ryan Schonfeld, and Sarah Zurell took that theme even further. AI isn’t just about replacing tasks—it’s fundamentally reshaping business models. From AI-powered loss prevention to predictive inventory, we heard firsthand how brands shift from data-driven insights to fully automated AI-powered decision-making.

AI, Business Strategy & The Triangle Offense?

One of the most unexpected yet interesting insights of the night came from Metta World Peace during his conversation with Alexandra Rossi and Henry Park. The way he broke down Phil Jackson’s Triangle Offense as a model for AI-driven business strategy was next level. Just like in basketball, successful AI adoption isn’t just about having the right data—it’s about positioning, flow, and execution.

A Fireside Chat with Luke Norris – The AI Impact

Fireside Chat with Carl Brown & Luke Norris, CEO of Kamiwaza was another highlight. Luke’s breakdown of AI’s real impact on retail operations—from front-end personalization to back-end efficiency—was eye-opening. He challenged the room to think beyond AI as a tool and start seeing it as an enabler of entirely new business paradigms.

Unpacking AI’s Role in Retail – Key Takeaways

✅ Edge AI is the Future – Retailers are deploying AI-powered microservers in stores to reduce latency and process AI models on-site for real-time decision-making.

✅ Retail is Finally AI-Ready – After years of skepticism, both businesses and consumers are embracing AI-driven shopping experiences at an unprecedented scale.

✅ From Data to AI Agents – The industry is shifting from structured data and analytics to fully autonomous AI agents capable of making real-time decisions without human intervention.

✅ Human-less Stores, AI-Optimized Supply Chains & Omnichannel Sales Are Becoming Reality – Concepts that seemed futuristic just a few years ago—cashier-less stores, real-time inventory tracking, and AI-driven logistics—are now gaining real traction.

Looking Ahead: AI’s Role in Retail is No Longer Theoretical

This event made it clear—AI is no longer a "nice-to-have." As AI hardware, software, and services continue advancing, retailers are moving past experiments and into full-scale deployment. With infrastructure challenges being tackled head-on by Supermicro, NVIDIA, and other tech giants, the conversation has shifted from "Should we invest in AI?" to "How do we scale AI efficiently and profitably?"

A huge thank you to our partners NVIDIA, Supermicro in supporting this great experience. The buzz proved that AI in retail isn’t just coming—it’s here.

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💵Bay Area Startups Secured Over $970M

This was a week for biotech and applications with just a single megadeal, $350B to biotech Eikon Therapeutics. The week's $970 in fundings takes February-to-date to $6.5B - $2B more than February 2024. But February fundings are still coming in so we won't have the final number until early next week. If you're interested in checking out the full breakdown for February, join us on Friday, March 7 for the latest edition of SV Tech, Talent, Capital & Trends – more details and register here.

On exits: we're still waiting. There was a single IPO announcement this week - BridgeBio Oncology Therapeutics and they have chosen the SPAC route to get into the public markets. SPACs have traditionally not fared well and we don't expect that to change this year.

High valuations, low/no exits: Per Pitchbook, the continued lack of large exits now means that more than $4 trillion of market value is locked up in startups, more than double the 2020 $1.7 trillion market value. The high valuations of 2021-2022 continue to impact startups negatively, as companies come back to the market for new rounds - and lower valuations. In 2024, 25% of US venture rounds were down or flat, more than 2X the 2022 rate and the highest in a decade. More...

Follow us on LinkedIn to stay on top of what's happening in 2025 in startup fundings, M&A and IPOs, VC fundraising plus executive & investor activity.

Early Stage:

• Genspark AI closed a $100M Series A, a new AI-powered search engine startup that consolidates information from various websites into a single, comprehensive page.

• Mimic closed a $50M Series A, detects ransomware early, deflect attacks before damage occurs, and recover in seconds—not days or weeks—without allowing threat actors to reestablish access.

• Patlytics closed a $14M Series A, unlocks massive productivity gains across the patent lifecycle — from patent prosecution, litigation, and pruning to invention disclosure processes.

• DocUnlock closed a $3M Seed, supercharges customs brokers and freight-forwarders by transforming commercial invoices, packing lists, ISFs, and other shipping documents into ready-to-file entries using artificial intelligence.

• Sonar Mental Health closed a $2.4M Pre-Seed, an AI-powered mental health platform helping young people thrive.

Growth Stage:

• Eikon Therapeutics closed a $350.7M Series D, advancing breakthrough therapies through the purposeful integration of science and engineering.x

• Bitwise Asset Management closed a $70M Series B, a leading crypto specialist asset manager that financial advisors, family offices, and institutional investors partner with to understand and access the opportunities in crypto.

• Metronome closed a $50M Series C, the leading usage-based billing platform that helps companies launch products faster—easily deploy any pricing today and iterate confidently tomorrow.

• Auditoria closed a $38M Series B, the leader in agentic AI solutions for corporate finance that automate business processes to accelerate finance operations and cash performance.

• Mode Inc. closed a $5.3M Series B, provides an AI-powered platform that redefines building data and energy management by consolidating data from all building systems into one intelligent solution.

Kamiwaza.ai The GenAI Superhuman Engine

Kamiwaza is redefining enterprise AI infrastructure with a unified inference mesh and locality-aware data engine, enabling scalable, private AI deployments. Unlike isolated AI solutions, Kamiwaza facilitates multi-vendor AI ecosystems across cloud, on-prem, and edge environments—ensuring enterprises can scale GenAI without sacrificing security, efficiency, or control.

With a single API and SDK, Kamiwaza abstracts the complexity of deploying AI models across diverse infrastructures, allowing organizations to securely harness enterprise data while maintaining compliance. By ensuring inference happens where it’s needed most, Kamiwaza optimizes both performance and cost efficiency.

GenAI Orchestration Engine

• Works with private data across any hardware, format, and location.

• Ensures enterprise data security without requiring data movement.

• Provides seamless integration with internal and third-party applications.

Enterprise-Grade AI Stack

• Fully integrated yet loosely coupled architecture for unlimited scalability.

• Direct support for Ray and CockroachDB with built-in integrations for Milvus, Sentence Transformers, DataHub, Hugging Face, and vLLM.

• Extended connectors for additional commercial AI products.

Kamiwaza Inference Mesh & Location-Aware Data Engine

• Processes data where it resides, eliminating unnecessary data movement.

• Supports real-time AI inference across multiple clouds, on-premises systems, and edge environments.

• Passes only inference results between locations, optimizing efficiency and security.

Why Enterprises Choose Kamiwaza AI

AI at Scale Without Complexity

• Unifies disparate AI solutions into a modular, extensible architecture that scales effortlessly.

• Enables enterprises to integrate AI across cloud, on-prem, and edge environments with minimal friction.

Security, Governance, and Compliance Built-In

• Ensures AI operates within existing enterprise security, authentication (SSO/SAML), and compliance frameworks.

• Provides full control over AI deployments while maintaining data sovereignty.

Contact Kamiwaza AI

📧 Email: Contact Us
🌐 Website: Kamiwaza AI
💬 Join the Community: Kamiwaza Discord

Around The Valley

CXO Insights // FEB27 Santa Monica

The team did a fantastic job coming together to execute a roadshow. Backed by great weather and good socal vibes, and some celebrity sightings, it was a great experience for all.

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