firmly raises $15 million to link online shops with AI shopping agents

firmly, a Seattle-based start-up that connects online shops to AI shopping assistants, said on Thursday, 5 November 2026, that it has raised $15 million in a Series A funding round led by Squarepoint Capital. J.P. Morgan Payments, Mastercard and Samsung NEXT also took part, among others. The company said the round brings its total funding to about $20 million. Alongside the funding, firmly launched Ask Agent, a chat-style shopping assistant that merchants can add to their own websites. The valuation was not disclosed.

"Agentic commerce" is the industry's name for shopping done with the help of AI agents: software that does not just answer questions but can take actions, such as finding a product, filling a cart and paying, on a person's behalf. Chatbots from big AI companies are adding shopping features, and payment networks are preparing for purchases that an AI starts rather than a person clicking "buy". The problem for an ordinary online shop is that each AI assistant, marketplace or social app has its own way of reading product listings and taking orders. Building a separate link to each one is costly, especially for smaller sellers.

firmly's pitch is to be the single connection in the middle. A merchant connects once, and its products and checkout become available wherever shoppers and their AI assistants are. The company says its network reaches more than 11 million merchants representing more than $900 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV), which means the total value of goods sold. These are the company's own figures and have not been independently checked.

The list of investors is telling. J.P. Morgan Payments and Mastercard sit in the middle of how card payments move, and both have an interest in making sure that when an AI assistant buys something, the payment still travels through trusted, secure channels. Samsung NEXT is the venture arm of the electronics maker, whose phones and devices are one of the places where such assistants live. Their backing suggests that banks and payment companies see agent-led shopping as something to prepare for now.

For readers in India, where online shopping is growing fast and AI assistants are being built into payment and shopping apps, the round shows the kind of plumbing that global companies are building for the next stage of e-commerce. The same questions, about who controls the checkout, how payments are secured and what a shop pays to be visible to AI agents, will matter to Indian sellers too.

Peepals calculation: The $15 million Series A is about 75% of the roughly $20 million the company has raised in total (15 / 20 = 0.75), so this one round is about three times everything it raised before (15 / 5 = 3). At the reported prices, a merchant would pay between $24,000 and $180,000 a year ($2,000 × 12 and $15,000 × 12). Our calculation from the reported figures.

Short-term: Merchants already on firmly Connect get a new tool in Ask Agent, and the company will use the money to add more AI agents and marketplaces to its network and to grow outside the United States.

Long-term: If AI assistants become a common way to shop, the companies that connect shops to those assistants could become important gatekeepers, much as payment gateways did for the first wave of e-commerce. Competition in this layer is likely to grow as large technology and payments firms build their own tools.

Who is affected: Online merchants, especially small and mid-sized ones; shoppers who use AI assistants to buy; payment networks and banks; and AI and marketplace companies that want access to product catalogues and checkout.

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