After a couple of subdued years, investors are warming back up to fashion startups.
Fashion companies globally have raised $1.1 billion in venture capital investment so far this year, according to startup data platform Dealroom, which is already equal to the total amount invested in 2024.
Some of the biggest notable venture rounds raised this year are: India’s cross-border sourcing and supply chain startup Geniemode, which completed a $50 million series C round in February; Portugal’s textile defect detection software startup Smartex AI, which raised $40 million in May; and California’s Archive, a software startup that enables existing brands to add an omnichannel resale strand to their business, which raised $30 million in series B funding in February.
It may come as little surprise that many of the fashion tech startups that investors are backing this year are built around AI — from consumer-facing personal shopping AI agents to B2B software startups that promise to make brands’ supply chains more sustainable. The fresh wave of fashion tech startups that have raised funding in 2025 have also been launched by a cohort of experienced founders — from AI personal styling agent startup Alta, whose founder Jenny Wang cut her teeth at Doordash and Re-Inc, to AI avatar virtual try-on startup Doji’s Dorian Dargan and Jim Winkens, who between them held previous roles at Apple, Meta, DeepMind and Google.
Thanks to the AI boom — and the fact that plenty of retail’s pain points remain unsolved — a new crop of fashion tech startups are ripe for funding. Here’s who investors are eyeing.
AI-powered shopping
Launched: October 2022
HQ: New York
Latest round: $10.6 million combined pre-seed and seed in June, led by GV and True Ventures. Joined by Bam Ventures, Charge Ventures, Fab Ventures, Flying Fish Ventures, Mercury Fund, Trust Fund by Sophia Amoruso and XRC Ventures.
What does it do?
Nectar Social describes itself as an “agentic community management and social listening platform” that’s aiming to funnel consumers’ social media interactions with brands into direct purchases.
Why Nectar Social?
Just like affiliate marketing, sometimes brands struggle to measure how much their traction on social media actually converts to sales. “Misbah and Farah Uraizee, ex-Meta product leaders and sisters, are tackling one of the thorniest pain points in modern retail: how do brands keep up with millions of conversations happening in comments, DMs and UGC across TikTok and Instagram?” says Amy Wu Martin, partner at Menlo Ventures, who invests in consumer-facing startups across AI, fashion and gaming. “They’re building the connective tissue between real-time customer interactions and brand response — so high-growth brands can turn comments into conversion and DMs into a curated customer journey. I see this as part of a broader shift towards one-to-one, high-context commerce, where loyalty is won in micro-moments.”
Launched: 2023
HQ: San Francisco
Latest round: $11 million seed in June, led by Menlo Ventures. Joined by the Arnault family-backed Aglaé Ventures, Benchstrength Ventures, Conviction, Phenomenal Ventures, and angels including Doordash co-founder and CEO Tony Xu and Poshmark founder and CEO Manish Chandra.
What does it do?
Alta’s app, currently in public beta mode, lets users create personal avatars and upload items from their real-life wardrobes to virtual wardrobe inventories. (Read more about it in our piece on AI agents here.)
Why Alta?
“Alta is building the AI stylist of the future, making getting dressed smarter, more sustainable and deeply personal,” says Frédérique Dame, general partner at Google Ventures, specialising in consumer startups. “Now that AI is mature enough to power intuitive, daily decisions, Alta is helping users shop and style with confidence using their own wardrobes, lifestyles and preferences.”
Alta founder Wang is a trained engineer who also has a deep personal interest in fashion and consumer behaviour. Investors underline the brand partnerships that she’s already secured, including one of the first AI collaborations with the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA).
Launched: 2020
HQ: London
Latest round: Currently raising a seed round.
What does it do?
Modelled on the Clueless wardrobe analogy, Whering is a digital wardrobe app onto which users can upload the clothes they currently own, to catalogue and style via the platform.
Why Whering?
“Whering helps consumers shop less and wear more by turning their closet into a digital, data-powered tool for intentional style,” Dame says. The next wave of startups like Whering and Alta are promoting conscious consumption by helping consumers get more creative while sticking to the pieces they already own.
Retail software
Launched: October 2022
HQ: New York
Latest round: $24 million series A in January, led by Andreessen Horowitz and joined by Greycroft Partners, Correlation Ventures and MVP Ventures.
What does it do?
An AI-powered design software platform that operates a subscription-based model and sells to fashion brands and retailers to enable their design teams to create high-demand designs quickly.
Why Raspberry AI?
“Raspberry AI collapses the fashion design cycle from months into minutes,” Wu Martin says. “Its proprietary AI transforms a designer’s sketch into fully realised, photorealistic garments, and can instantly generate dozens of fabric and print iterations. That’s not just time savings, it’s a radical rethink of what the creative process looks like when you remove physical sampling constraints.”
“What excites me here is how Raspberry straddles creative tooling and supply chain optimisation. Its impact shows up in sustainability [less waste], speed to market [from 12 to 18 months, to a few days], and creative freedom for brands like Loft, Boston Proper, Under Armour and Reformation,” Wu Martin explains. “The opportunity to plug directly into product lifecycle management [PLM] and direct-to-consumer [DTC] brand pipelines gives Raspberry an enviable position as a foundational platform, not just a feature.”
Launched: 2025
HQ: New York
Latest round: $5.5 million seed in July, led by Charge VC, Inspired Capital, Red Swan Ventures and Prospeq, alongside a group of entrepreneurs.
What does it do?
Queen One says it is building a technology platform that connects how customers are interacting with a brand’s product pages and marketing content, updating them in real-time to reflect what people are saying on socials and buying online.
Why Queen One?
“CEO Ryan Urban, who previously founded and scaled Wunderkind to a $200 million-plus marketing platform, founded Queen One to reimagine how brands tell their stories,” says Wu Martin. “In a world where products are often reduced to stock keeping units [SKUs] on static websites, Queen One is building dynamic, personalised living website experiences consumers are more used to seeing from social media, and programmatic ways to target prospective customers for brands’ owned channels.”
Launched: 2021
HQ: Berlin
Latest round: N/A
What does it do?
Giftd has designed an app for users to connect with brands like a social platform, and reduce overall fashion consumption by releasing exclusive giveaways of archive and sample pieces via the app.
Why Giftd?
“Giftd is bringing AI-powered personalisation to the gifting experience,” Tim Rehder, general partner at Earlybird VC, says. “They’ve recently explored collaborations with brands like Fabletics, engaging active social media followings, and expanded their operational capabilities with external logistics partners.”
Circular fashion
Launched: 2018
HQ: San Francisco
Latest round: Undisclosed seed round from the Alice Anderson Fund.
What does it do?
AirRobe has built a proprietary “circular wardrobe technology” platform for consumers to buy, sell, rent or recycle pre-owned clothes and footwear from global brands.
Why AirRobe?
“AirRobe is quietly embedding circular fashion into e-commerce infrastructure, turning every purchase into a potential resale or rental with zero friction,” Dame says.
Launched: 2022
HQ: Helsinki, Finland
Latest round: Seed round in April 2023 led by Lifeline Ventures.
What does it do?
Robes Rental is a fashion rental platform that focuses on higher end brands.
Why Robes Rental?
“Robes Rental is redefining access to fashion through its rental-based model,” says Rehder. “The Finnish company aims to make ‘luxury fashion more accessible than fast fashion’, with special outfits for events and parties available when people don’t want to buy a one-off look for the occasion.”
Launched: 2022
HQ: Berlin
Latest round: €3 million seed in May 2024 led by World Fund, joined by Accel, General Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners, NEA, Northzone, Backbone Ventures, Earlybird and Minc.
What does it do?
Faircado has built a browser extension that’s dedicated to enabling consumers to discover secondhand goods. It uses AI to match up text and images from what users are searching with pre-loved goods — what it’s calling a “sustainable shopping assistant”.
Why Faircado?
“Berlin-based Faircado is extending circular shopping to everyday categories through smart browser integrations,” Rehder says. “They won the [coveted startup] competition at Slush 100, make secondhand shopping easy and use clever marketing on social media.”
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