Wizard, an AI-native shopping agent cofounded by Marc Lore and CEO Melissa Bridgeford, is coming out of a nearly 5-year private beta with an ambitious promise: to end the era of endless scrolling in ecommerce and replace it with a personalized and streamlined shopping experience.
Launched publicly on Feb. 11, the New York–based startup is betting that the next wave of online retail will be driven not by bigger marketplaces, but by agents that do the work of searching, comparing, and checking out on behalf of consumers.
“The online shopping experience today is highly fragmented, and consumers are searching across multiple tabs, multiple websites, multiple social platforms to find and buy what they’re looking for,” Bridgeford told Fortune. “Wizard is simplifying that entire process by doing the work for you. We’re essentially generating the best product recommendations from across the web”
The platform’s launch has been a long time coming: Wizard raised a $50 million Series A in 2021 led by NEA, with participation from Accel and Lore, who also serves as cofounder and chairman. Lore—best known for founding Jet.com and selling it to Walmart—where he later ran U.S. ecommerce, brings heavyweight credibility in online retail. Bridgeford, a Harvard Business School alum, previously founded Stylust, a conversational commerce startup that Wizard acquired and used as the foundation for its technology and team.
