{"id":791047,"date":"2026-05-12T12:29:43","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T12:29:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/791047\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T12:29:43","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T12:29:43","slug":"ai-powered-grocery-startup-vori-raises-22m-series-b-funding-round-afrotech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/791047\/","title":{"rendered":"AI-Powered Grocery Startup Vori Raises $22M Series B Funding Round – AfroTech"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brandon Hill has raised millions in funding<\/a> guided by the mission of ensuring \u201cevery supermarket in America autonomous,\u201d he said<\/a> on LinkedIn.<\/p>\n

For many founders,<\/a> their lived experiences help shape the ventures they go on to create. Hill is a third-generation grocer with grandparents who owned<\/a> a small store in Oklahoma and parents who\u2019ve had careers in the grocery industry, Fortune reports.<\/a> In 2020, Hill first stumbled upon the grocery industry\u2019s outdated administrative systems while visiting his parents in Minnesota. He found a stack of various paper invoices and wholesale catalogs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI looked at these books, and I said, \u2018Okay, what is this? A relic or a souvenir from you guys when you guys were my age?\u2019 And they said, \u2018No, this is how grocery stores operate here in 2020,\u2019\u201d\u00a0Hill explained, according to Fortune.<\/p>\n

This informed Vori, an AI-powered<\/a> grocery startup for independent grocers. It launched in 2019 in East Palo Alto with a team of Stanford engineers from SpaceX, Google, and Facebook, bringing experience in AI, machine learning, fintech,<\/a> logistics, and grocery store operations, according to<\/a> the company\u2019s LinkedIn profile.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrocery is a $1.5T domestic market \u2014 bigger than restaurants, bigger than hotels. But it\u2019s running on technology from the Reagan administration. This industry is massive, essential, and near and dear to my heart. My parents met in a supermarket. My grandparents owned a grocery store. My mom Tori<\/a> works at Vori. Walmart and Amazon have invested heavily in this space, capturing 25% of U.S. grocery spending. But no one is building tech for the other 75% of the market,\u201d Hill, Vori CEO, explained on LinkedIn.<\/p>\n

Vori is a grocery management software that functions as \u201cvirtual employees that never clock out,\u201d according to<\/a> its website. Vori manages checkout, payments, pricing, ordering, inventory, and loyalty, Hill noted on LinkedIn.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not about eliminating jobs,\u201d Hill told Fortune. \u201cIt\u2019s about, how do you fill gaps so you don\u2019t have to spend 60 to 70 percent of your time moving data from left to right?\u201d<\/p>\n

Vori has processed more than $500 million in payments in more than 55+ cities since its launch, reaching more than 1 million consumers across the U.S, according to the outlet.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the past six months, we have doubled payment volume, with new stores being onboarded every single day. The revenue we used to close in a year, we now close in a month,\u201d Hill wrote on LinkedIn.<\/p>\n

Vori has raised $22 million in a Series B<\/a> funding round led by Cherryrock Capital with additional participation from Greylock Partners and The Factory, Fortune reports.<\/p>\n

The funds will help the company scale engineering and product teams and ensure Vori can reach more stores.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brandon Hill has raised millions in funding guided by the mission of ensuring \u201cevery supermarket in America autonomous,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":791048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[165779,18550,64,607,4313,242,67,132,68,17613],"class_list":{"0":"post-791047","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-afrotech","9":"tag-black-community","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-entrepreneurship","12":"tag-investing","13":"tag-tech","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-wealth-building"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116561613596657956","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/791048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}