Neil Shah (left) and Abhi Thanendran (right) are the founders of the live auction app Tilt.
Tilt
Tilt, a live shopping auction app that says it uses AI to make selling online faster and easier, has raised $26 million in funding.The London-based startup, founded in 2021 by ex-Revolut employees Abhi Thanendran and Neil Shah, has raised $50 million to date.Buyers select a category on the app — such as womenswear or trading cards — and scroll through livestream auctions much like TikTok videos. Sellers go live to showcase their products, while viewers bid and buy in real time — a format often described as QVC for the social media generation.Tilt says it uses AI in nearly every step of the selling process. Its Snap tool, for example, automates the process by creating an auction listing when the seller holds an item up to the camera. It auto-generates product descriptions and suggests pricing in seconds, Tilt says. "Live commerce is very hard on the seller, and they have to do a lot of things," cofounder and CEO Thanendran told Business Insider. "With the AI technology, we can actually take away a lot of those problems."There is a copilot — which Thanendran described as a kind of live coach — which prompts sellers in real time on how to improve the auction, while an agentic search function helps buyers find items across different live sessions.AI clip-farming, posted on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts, is also used to help sellers grow."A big part of Tilt is we want to help anybody start from nothing and become superstars," Thanendran said.Tilt makes money by charging fees, mainly on the buyer side, with a smaller portion coming from the seller side. Its key competitors include TikTok Shop and eBay Live.The latest funding round was led by TQ Ventures. Vinted Ventures, the investment arm of Lithuanian-founded secondhand resale platform Vinted, joined the funding round alongside existing investors including Balderton Capital, Earlybird, and Seedcamp.Thanendran said the funding will be used to build more AI-powered products and improve discovery, continue scaling the team, and expand into new markets across Europe and into the US.Here's an exclusive look at the nine-page pitch deck Tilt used to raise $26 million:
