In Europe and beyond, the retail industry is increasingly shaped by global tech platforms such as Amazon and Temu, which are adding margin pressure on traditional retailers. To stay competitive, European retailers need to optimize their product mix and identify margin opportunities at high speed.
We are excited to partner with Zenline AI from Day One and support their mission to help European retailers regain competitiveness by enabling smarter, AI-driven assortment decisions. Based in Zurich, Switzerland, co-founders Arber Sejdiji and Gerrit Merz, combine retail expertise with AI acumen – shaped at BCG, P&G, ETH Zurich, the University of Cambridge, and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology – to develop a powerful technology that helps build profitable, shopper-centric assortments.
Zenline’s AI agents deliver automated, product-level recommendations, from product launches and consolidation to the ongoing optimization of existing lines. Zenline analyzes internal margin and competitor data alongside social trends and shopper behavior to identify assortment gaps and suggest concrete pricing and optimization actions. Zenline’s AI works even without internal retailer data and was co-developed with retail teams to ensure operational fit.
Arber Sejdiji, Co-founder and CEO of Zenline AI, comments:
“We build AI agents that think like assortment decision-makers, but operate in seconds. Our mission is to empower European retailers to compete profitably again. Given how critical and shopper-centric assortment is, a retailer can win by increasing its top line and building a competitive edge against Amazon and Temu, because customers will easily find what they are looking for, consciously or not.”
Zenline is already used by leading European retailers, with more than 1 million products analyzed since early 2025.
On why we invested in Zenline, our Partner Sia Houchangnia, highlights:
“Zenline hits a nerve in retail tech. The future of category management is AI-powered. Until now, retailers lacked the foundation to make the most important decisions: what a strong assortment actually looks like. The team combines deep expertise in agentic systems and retail, and we’ve been genuinely impressed by their speed of execution. They have rethought assortment logic from the ground up to deliver immediate value to their first customers. This is exactly the kind of talent and solution coming out of Europe that we’re excited to back.”
We are excited to lead Zenline’s $1.6 million Pre-Seed round, joined by Yellow, First Momentum and Arc Investors. With the new funding, Zenline plans to accelerate product development, refine its AI model, and expand into additional verticals.