Introduction

Coresight Research is a research partner of Shoptalk Spring 2026, which will take place during March 24–26 in Las Vegas, Nevada, US. Shoptalk Spring is an annual conference that unites executives from retailers, consumer-facing brands and technology vendors across physical stores and e-commerce to discuss the latest trends, innovations and challenges in the industry

At the event, the “Shark Reef” Startup Pitch will see 10 early-stage retail-technology innovators compete across two themed sessions: “Technologies Reinventing Customer Experience” and “Technologies Driving Operational Efficiencies,” competing to win the Judges’ Choice and Audience Choice awards. In this report, we preview the competition, covering its format and the judging panel as well as an introduction to each participating innovator.

Shoptalk Spring 2026 “Shark Reef” Startup Pitch: Preview

Event Format

The Startup Pitch competition will feature two sessions, each with five companies, on the Technology Stage on the first day of Shoptalk Spring.

Within each session, each Founder/CEO will present for three minutes, then answer tough questions from the judging panel. Attendees will rate each presentation to determine the winner of the Audience Choice award. The competition spans two back-to-back sessions, each focused on one of two areas of disruption (which we detail later in this report):

• March 24, 9:30 a.m.–10:10 a.m. PT (local time of the event)—Technologies Reinventing Customer Experience
• March 24, 10:20 a.m.–11:00 a.m. PT—Technologies Driving Operational Efficiencies

The judges will then reveal the Judges’ Choice winner, who will receive an optional $100,000 in funding from Commerce Ventures. The Audience Choice winner will be determined based on audience ratings.

Judging Panel

Deborah Weinswig, CEO and Founder of Coresight Research, will emcee the pitch competition and will serve as lead judge. Weinswig is an award-winning global retail analyst and a specialist in retail innovation and technology. Weinswig is a member of the Advisory Board of several accelerators and is involved in early-stage investing through the Hong Kong Business Angel Network (HKBAN) and Golden Seeds. She serves on the board of directors for Primaris REIT, American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA) and Xcel Brands, Inc. Weinswig is an Executive Board Member of The Terry J. Lundgren Center for Retailing at the University of Arizona and an Advisory Board Member of the World Retail Congress. Weinswig also serves as an e-commerce expert for the International Council of Shopping Centers’ (ICSC’s) Research Task Force and was a founding member of the Oracle Retail Industry Strategy Council.

Weinswig will be joined on the judging panel by three experts:

• Brent Murri, Partner at M13: Murri is a Partner leading early-stage investments in software and marketplaces, with a focus on commerce enablement, vertical SaaS, and the creator economy. His investments include Pietra, Rebuy, Passport, interviewing.io, Doorvest and Bounty, among others. Prior to M13, he was at Battery Ventures, focused on growth-stage enterprise software, and before that worked in strategy and business development at Samsung NEXT. Murri joined M13 in 2017 as the firm’s first investing hire and was later promoted to Partner.
• Kamanasish Kundu, SVP, Head of Digital and Ecommerce at Kendra Scott: Kundu joined Kendra Scott in 2023 and has oversight for all aspects of the e-commerce business including P&L, analytics, long-term digital road map and offering a best-in-class connected omnichannel experience. Kundu has nearly two decades of experience in digital, e-commerce, retail and engineering. Previously, he was at Pandora where he launched Pandora’s US e-commerce website in 2015, headed the e-commerce business and oversaw the omnichannel programs and Amazon.com marketplace partnership.
• Matt Nichols, General Partner at Commerce Ventures: Nichols has been an investor in and operator of early-stage technology companies for more than 20 years. He leads the firm’s commerce infrastructure and retail technology investment team and is a member of the management committee, serving on the boards of several portfolio companies including Pensa and Instock. Prior to Commerce Ventures, he was the CEO of Gemvara, a disruptive jewelry e-commerce business that was sold to Berkshire Hathaway.

Source: Coresight Research

 

Innovative Solutions Across Two Areas of Disruption in Retail

The participating startups satisfy the following selection criteria:

• Business-to-business (B2B) solution
• Pre-Series A—funding of less than $10 million
• Founded since 2021
• Scalable—addresses a major retail challenge or opportunity
• Highly differentiated—unique or highly differentiated technology or business model

We categorize the 10 startups into two areas of disruption in retail, as detailed below.

• Technologies Reinventing Customer Experience

This category comprises startups whose innovative solutions can help retailers and consumer brands deliver compelling shopping experiences and exceptional customer service.

• Startups: Azoma, Autolane, Bayezon AI, Flock AI, SocialQ AI
• Technologies Driving Operational Efficiencies

From the supply chain to marketing teams, this category comprises startups whose technology solutions can drive efficiencies and boost productivity across retailer and consumer brand organizations.

• Startups: Coframe, Ethosphere, Merchkit, RateRunners, ShopSight

Figure 1.
Shoptalk Spring “Shark Reef” Startup Pitch: 10 Innovators Across Two Areas of Retail Disruption

Source: Shoptalk/Coresight Research

 

The Competing Innovators

We introduce each innovator in alphabetical order below. Our Innovator Profiles provide more detail on each company

Autolane

• Presenter at Shoptalk Spring: Ben Seidl, Co-Founder & CEO
• Area of Disruption: Technologies Reinventing Customer Experience
• Download the Innovator Profile for Autolane here.

Autolane provides curbside infrastructure that enables retailers, restaurants and commercial property owners to coordinate autonomous vehicle pickups, drop-offs and deliveries at high-traffic destinations. The company combines curbside hardware with cloud-based software to authenticate vehicles, assign parking stalls and automate pickup workflows, enabling operators to manage autonomous vehicle arrivals and order handoffs with less manual intervention.

Autolane enables property owners to manage autonomous vehicle pickups at retail destinations
Source: Autolane

 

Azoma

• Presenter at Shoptalk Spring: Max Sinclair, Founder & CEO
• Area of Disruption: Technologies Reinventing Customer Experience
• Download the Innovator Profile for Azoma here.

Azoma is a technology platform that helps retailers and brands optimize product data for visibility across AI-driven search and agentic commerce environments. The company provides tools that enable retailers to analyze how AI systems interpret their product listings and structure product information for accurate referencing within AI-assisted shopping experiences.

Azoma enabled David Protein to boost its visibility across AI-driven search platforms
Source: Azoma

 

Bayezon AI

• Presenter at Shoptalk Spring: Rajan Balasundaram, CEO
• Area of Disruption: Technologies Reinventing Customer Experience
• Download the Innovator Profile for Bayezon AI here.

Bayezon AI provides an agentic commerce platform that enables retailers to deliver conversational, AI-driven shopping experiences, improving product discovery, recommendations and customer engagement. The platform uses real-time AI and enriched product data to support conversational search, product recommendations and automated support within digital shopping journeys.

Bayezon enabled City Beach to power AI shopping assistants that improved product discovery and conversion
Source: Bayezon AI

 

Coframe

• Presenter at Shoptalk Spring: Josh Payne, Co-Founder & CEO
• Area of Disruption: Technologies Driving Operational Efficiencies
• Download the Innovator Profile for Coframe here.

Coframe offers an AI-powered experimentation platform that analyzes user behavior and automatically generates and tests website variations based on performance outcomes. The platform integrates directly with a company’s website to produce and test multiple versions of page elements including copy, layouts and visual components, enabling teams to iterate on website changes more frequently.

Coframe’s platform automatically tests multiple website variants to maximize conversions
Source: Coframe

 

Ethosphere

• Presenter at Shoptalk Spring: Evan Smith, Co-Founder & CEO
• Area of Disruption: Technologies Driving Operational Efficiencies
• Download the Innovator Profile for Ethosphere here.

Ethosphere offers a voice AI platform that captures and analyzes in-store conversations between retail associates and customers, providing retailers with visibility into frontline store operations and employee engagement. The company converts in-store conversations into structured insights that store managers and retail leaders can use to evaluate performance and guide employee coaching.

Ethosphere provides AI-generated insights into store interactions and associate–customer conversations
Source: Ethosphere

 

Flock AI

• Presenter at Shoptalk Spring: Vita Mallela, Co-Founder & CEO
• Area of Disruption: Technologies Reinventing Customer Experience
• Download the Innovator Profile for Flock AI here.

Flock AI is an AI-native visual content platform that enables retailers to generate brand-consistent product imagery at scale without relying on traditional photoshoots. The company trains AI models on a brand’s existing creative assets and visual guidelines to produce large volumes of visual content for product listings, marketing campaigns and digital storefronts across different audiences and channels.

Flock AI enables retailers to showcase beauty products across diverse skin tones without traditional photoshoots
Source: Flock AI

 

Merchkit

• Presenter at Shoptalk Spring: Bijan Vaez, Founder & CEO
• Area of Disruption: Technologies Driving Operational Efficiencies
• Download the Innovator Profile for Merchkit here.

Merchkit streamlines product data management and merchandising workflows for retailers and brands, enabling teams to organize catalog information and coordinate merchandising activities across channels and systems from a single platform. The company automates the extraction and standardization of product attributes, generates product titles and descriptions from structured data, and prepares listings for use across sales channels and marketplaces.

Merchkit transforms raw supplier data into structured product information
Source: Merchkit

 

RateRunners

• Presenter at Shoptalk Spring: Karolina Smith, Co-Founder & President
• Area of Disruption: Technologies Driving Operational Efficiencies
• Download the Innovator Profile for RateRunners here.

RateRunners automates parcel billing reconciliation and provides visibility into shipping cost data for brands, 3PLs and carriers, connecting them through a shared system that aggregates parcel billing information and enables organizations to review and reconcile shipping invoices. The platform enables users to analyze shipping charges, identify discrepancies between billed and contracted rates and monitor parcel costs across carriers and logistics partners.

RateRunners turns messy shipping invoices into clean, reconcilable data
Source: RateRunners

 

ShopSight

• Presenter at Shoptalk Spring: Nick Davis, Founder & CEO
• Area of Disruption: Technologies Driving Operational Efficiencies
• Download the Innovator Profile for ShopSight here.

ShopSight offers a generative AI-powered platform that connects brands with consumers during product development, enabling shoppers to submit ideas, vote on concepts and engage with emerging product trends. The company aggregates signals from consumer participation to help brands assess consumer demand, identify emerging product concepts and refine product strategies before committing to large-scale production.

ShopSight enables shoppers to generate and customize new product designs using AI
Source: ShopSight

 

SocialQ AI

• Presenter at Shoptalk Spring: Anna Liang, Founder & CEO
• Area of Disruption: Technologies Reinventing Customer Experience
• Download the Innovator Profile for SocialQ AI here.

SocialQ AI offers an AI-powered platform that enables brands to generate and manage social media content, creating posts, captions, images and videos tailored to different social platforms while maintaining consistent brand voice and messaging. The platform automates content creation workflows, enabling organizations to plan and publish social campaigns and adapt content to different platforms and audiences at scale.

SocialQ AI’s marketing agent enables unlimited social posts for organic growth
Source: SocialQ AI