Augmodo, the Seattle startup that straps AI-powered cameras onto retail workers to track store shelves, has raised $21 million as it pushes its technology beyond grocery aisles and into 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 he wasn’t even looking to raise fresh capital, said he was motivated by interest in the startup’s technology from customers beyond retail, including automotive settings and hospitals.
“Fundamentally, someone grabbing a wrench at an automotive factory isn’t that different from someone grabbing a Cheerios box,” Finman said. “Turns out the algorithms work pretty well across all of those.”
Founded in 2023, Augmodo builds AI-powered “Smartbadges” — lightweight wearable devices with dual cameras — that store employees wear passively as they move through aisles. The badges use computer vision, 3D mapping, and spatial computing to track shelf inventory in real time, building what the company calls a digital “Realogram” of each store.
Augmodo raised $37.5 million a year ago in a round that came after Australian pharmacy chain Chemist Warehouse — the startup’s first big customer — moved from a pilot to a full contract and validated the technology at scale. Now others want in on the action.
“Our whole mission statement is AI systems for the physical workforce,” Finman said. “Everyone’s focused on the 20% of the workforce that’s knowledge work, and we’re focused on the 80% of the workforce that’s physical work.”
That demand has pulled Augmodo into warehouses, facility maintenance, delivery operations, and even employee training — verticals the company didn’t originally set out to serve. Existing retail customers, Finman said, kept expanding their contracts to cover new parts of their operations, from auditing warehouse pallets to logging maintenance work like HVAC repairs.
The Smartbadge itself has evolved, too. Finman said it’s now lighter than an iPhone Air and has grown into what he calls an “everything device,” adding walkie-talkie capabilities, an opt-in panic button, and a digital ID display, on top of its original inventory-tracking function.
“That’s actually become a really big selling point,” Finman said. “You don’t need to buy five or six different devices, you buy one at cost, and then here’s all the different features that 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 monthly — a figure it expects to cross 1 billion square feet per month by year’s end. Augmodo is adding 50 to 100 new store locations a month.
The company’s headcount has grown 5x over 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 is ranked No. 145 on the GeekWire 200 list of top Pacific Northwest startups and was a finalist in the Hardware, Robotics, and Physical AI of the Year category at the 2026 GeekWire Awards.
Beyond TQ Ventures, backers include Lerer Hippeau, Jefferson River Capital, Arena Holdings, Chemist Warehouse, New Fare, Interlace, and Webb Investment Network.
Andrew Marks, co-founding partner at TQ, called Finman an “exceptional” leader and said every board meeting reinforced that demand for Augmodo’s tech was outpacing the team’s ability to serve it.
“When you pair a truly special founder with customers lining up around the door and pulling you into new markets, it was obvious we should propose putting more fuel on the fire,” Marks said.
Augmodo said it plans to use the new capital to expand its global enterprise footprint, invest further in its core AI models, and grow its engineering team — with a particular focus on hiring for computer vision and machine learning roles as the company scales its data processing beyond retail.
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