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L Catterton backs AI shopper Glance as agentic commerce race heats up

What's the deal? L CattertonDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → has made a strategic investment in Glance, an AI-powered personal shopping agent, in a late-stage venture round announced in October 2026. The consumer-focused private equity firm led the deal. Glance is run out of a subsidiary of tech company InMobi.

What's the endgame? Glance works like a personal shopper: it remembers user preferences, scours the web for deals, offers virtual try-ons, and seeks approval before buying. Founder and chief executive officer Naveen Tewari called it "an intelligence machine" that understands the right products and finds the best price.

Why now? Agentic commerce is reshaping how people discover and buy products. "Agentic commerce is fundamentally changing how consumers discover and shop for products," said Scott Dahnke, global chief executive officer of L Catterton. He added that the firm sees the shift as "among the most consequential" in consumer behaviour.

What's the traction? Glance has 10 million monthly active users in the US, averaging about 120 shopping prompts each a month, Tewari said. Almost 15% buy something monthly. The service reaches more than 60 million devices through an app and partnerships with Samsung, Android TV, and DirecTVDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →.

Glance has also been building out checkout: an October partnership brought PayPal-powered shopping to tens of millions of US consumers, and it has partnered with Google on AI shopping. The service can identify looks worn by actors on a smart TV and find options to buy, and interact with a smartphone camera when authorised.

What could go wrong? Glance enters a crowded field. Google is building conversational shopping and checkout into Search and Gemini, while Amazon and OpenAI develop competing shopping agents. Reliable distribution and checkout — not just recommendation quality — will decide who wins.

The signal: Big investors are placing early bets on who owns the AI shopping layer. L Catterton's backing signals that inspiration-led, visual discovery is a credible angle in a race otherwise dominated by search and platform giants. The test is whether Glance can turn browsing into repeat, measurable sales.

Read more: sg.style.yahoo.com

Image credit: PattayaPatrol

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