Acquisition Boosts In-Store Behavior Firm Standard AI

In San Francisco, retail data firm Standard AI has acquired Pathr.ai, which analyzes movement and behavior in stores to provide 'spatial intelligence'.

Standard AI taps computer vision and edge AI for long-form video analysis, measuring real-world behavior. Its platform supports a broad range of in-store measurement use cases, and works with retailers' existing security cameras, enabling retailers to apply a consistent data foundation across media performance, shopper behavior, and in-store execution. The firm, which is backed by investors including Y Combinator, SoftBank, CRV, and EQT Ventures, now operates in 24 countries, among retailers spanning automotive, specialty, grocery and travel.

According to Standard AI, the Pathr.ai acquisition will accelerate its delivery of 'practical, scalable insights that are easy to deploy and drive measurable outcomes for retailers.' Pathr.ai founder and CEO George Shaw (pictured) will join Standard AI as SVP AI Strategy, along with a number of team members. Shaw worked on one of the first computer-vision applications for retail at the MIT Media Lab, and later led a large analytics team at RetailNext, deploying technology across thousands of locations worldwide. He also held senior engineering roles at Intel, before founding Pathr.ai in 2019.

Angie Westbrock, CEO of Standard AI comments: 'AI in retail has been powerful for a long time, but not always accessible. Our belief is that the next phase of the category is about adoption, not abstraction. Retailers don't need more complexity; they need intelligence that fits into how they actually operate and delivers measurable ROI... Together we can fundamentally change how retailers think about computer vision - from an expensive experiment to essential infrastructure.'

CTO Dave Woollard says Shaw 'has spent years solving the exact problems our customers face: how to make spatial data reliable and interpretable.' Shaw himself adds: 'The rigor behind Standard AI's data - its accuracy and fidelity - is genuinely impressive. By bringing our teams and expertise together, we're helping establish the data layer that will become foundational to physical retail. The impact we can deliver at a global scale is what excites me most.'

Web site: www.standard.ai .