Source, the Irish start-up founded by teenager Liam Fuller, has raised $1.4m (€1.2m) in a pre-seed funding round led by Australian venture capital outfit Square Peg.
Source is building an AI procurement platform for retail businesses that integrates with stores’ email and point-of-service feeds to project inventory levels and automatically send purchase orders to suppliers.
The company says it can reduce admin hours by up to 80 per cent by eliminating manual processes and keeping shelves stocked, allowing shop owners to focus on other areas.
18-year-old Fuller began building Shopify apps and experimenting with large language models when he was 14.
Fuller and Joseph Mudrak won the Regeneron award at the 2024 BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition for their project, ‘Your Dynamic AI Voice Companion – Redefining Personal Assistance’.
A serial entrepreneur, Fuller was suspended from school for a viral LinkedIn post showing him making sales calls from the school bathroom.
He has now gone full-time with Source. The Source website states that its platform will launch this summer.
Announcing the funding round on LinkedIn, Fuller wrote that he “cold emailed” Square Peg co-founder Paul Bassat in March while visiting his grandparents in Australia.
He travelled to Sydney the next day to meet Bassatt, who later agreed to lead the funding round.
“I couldn’t be happier to have such an amazing group of investors behind me from across the globe ([San Francisco], Australia, Ireland) with such a high conviction in not only the current vision for Source but for myself as a founder, its incredible – thank you.
“And I’m extremely grateful for the people who helped me along the way, with intros & their time with 0 expectations of return.
“This is just the start, and I’m incredibly excited.”
TEN13, Stripe chief technical officer David Singleton, Eucalyptus co-founder Charlie Gearside and other angel investors also participated in the funding round.
“What struck us most about Liam when we met him wasn’t just his age, but his first-principles thinking and clear articulation of the ‘idea maze’ that led him to procurement automation,” said Square Peg in a statement.
Liam Fuller in an images that resulted from his suspension from school.
“Liam pairs technical depth with an intuitive understanding of how AI can solve real-world problems.
“We’re not just excited by his current vision for Source, we’re excited by his ability to navigate and adapt as the business evolves.”
Fuller is joined by chief technical officer Yoan Gabison, an AI engineer who oversees engineering from Paris. Gabison previously built a real-time notifications SaaS platform.
Photo: Liam Fuller, founder of Source. (Pic: LinkedIn/Liam Fuller)