Merx, a London-based startup building the “world’s first” AI-powered conversational platform to connect brands with consumers via WhatsApp, has today announced a €1.1 million pre-Seed funding round.
The round was led by VentureFriends, the European early-stage VC firm, with participation from Ascension, the London-based early-stage VC firm.
Pietro Cammerini, Co-founder of Merx, comments, “We believe the days of email marketing and website-centric digital commerce are over. In an AI-first world, brands will need to engage customers more directly, and provide hyper-personalised experiences wherever customers already are. This funding marks a pivotal moment for Merx as we continue our mission to revolutionise conversation commerce through AI and empower brands to engage with their customers in more meaningful ways.”
Founded in 2023 by Pietro Cammerini and Mohamed El Shaer, Merx has built a conversational commerce platform. Using its AI, brands are able to engage with customers through WhatsApp and similar messaging platforms, helping them find products or answer questions on product care.
Cammerini and El Shaer met during a Founder residency in London run by Antler, an early-stage VC firm.
Cammerini has over ten years of experience working with multi-billion euro brands around the world. He led large-scale digital transformation projects at Accenture, specialising in digital commerce and customer experience solutions.
El Shaer has a background in computer science and has spent his career working in software development and AI technologies. He is a former Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft and has also founded a number of startups in Egypt.
Jed Rose, Partner at Antler, comments, “Pietro and Mohamed have deep expertise building and scaling AI-powered solutions in commerce. They are rightly recognised as leaders in this space and are laser focused on transforming the way brands interact with customers through conversational commerce. We are delighted to have backed Merx from day zero and have every confidence in their long-term future success.”
According to Merx, as businesses face increasing challenges with diminishing returns from traditional digital marketing channels, such as email and paid ads, brands are turning to ‘conversational commerce’ solutions to introduce hyper-personalised, AI-driven customer interactions.
Conversational commerce, a new pillar of commerce that allows customers to engage directly with brands through messaging channels, is experiencing rapid growth.
According to Statista, global spending on conversational commerce is expected to increase from €37.7 billion in 2021 to €266 billion this year, a sevenfold increase in just four years.
WhatsApp, a key platform in this space, is the second largest social platform globally with nearly three billion users. According to figures provided by Merx, in the UK alone, 74% of the population uses WhatsApp – a figure that increases to 82% in Germany and 90% in Italy. On average, users spend 17 hours a month using the app. Open rates on WhatsApp exceed 95%, compared to 10% to 40% for email. Compared to the billions of sales that are attributed to Facebook (1st) and Youtube (3rd largest) globally, WhatsApp can be considered an untapped market that is expected to grow significantly with the rise of AI.
Merx targets the enterprise consumer goods and retail market and is reportedly already operating at significant scales handling high volumes of interactions, enabling thousands of purchases for customers.
The pre-Seed funding will be used to attract top-tier software engineering talent, accelerate product innovation, refine AI models to enhance personalisation and support enterprise platform integration.
Apostolos Apostolakis, Venturefriends founding partner, comments, “Over the years we have seen an increased difficulty for consumer facing companies to effectively engage with their audience and better serve their needs. WhatsApp can offer a very effective way to drive engagement as well as sales. We are excited to partner and support Pietro and Mohamed who have a deep understanding of the space and with Merx can help companies harness the WhatsApp channel.”