Standard Cognition raises $40 million to expand cashierless checkout

Standard Cognition raised $40 million in a Series A funding round among five different venture capitalists to expand its cashierless checkout footprint.

The Series A funding round was led by Initialized Capital and included participation by venture capital firms CRV and Y Combinator. The money will be used to fund a global expansion of Standard Cognition’s cashierless checkout concept, which it calls Autonomous Checkout.

John Novak

“In 2019, consumers will start to see autonomous checkout deployed in their favorite stores, and by 2025, it will be common,” said Jordan Fisher, co-founder and CEO of Standard Cognition in the press release.

Standard Cognition only opened its first store in September in downtown San Francisco. It has been developing the technology for sale to other retailers with a goal of beating Amazon to the market. Unlike Amazon, which intends to open its own stores without the traditional checkout lane, Standard Cognition’s mission is to develop the technology for resale to other merchants.

Amazon has now opened multiple cashierless stores which it calls Amazon Go, with three in Seattle, two in Chicago and one in San Francisco. Amazon has also been rumored to be considering opening 3,000 cashierless stores over the next few years.

Both CRV and Y Combinator, the startup accelerator based in Menlo Park, Calif., were participants in earlier Standard Cognition seed funding rounds. Y Combinator is best known for its ability to mix capital investments and coaching to young startups. Its list of successful investments include Stripe, Airbnb, LendUp, Instacart and WePay (acquired in 2017 by JPMorgan Chase).

According to Crunchbase, a website that tracks investments made in private fintech companies, Standard Cognition has raised $50.6 million in four rounds of funding since it began raising capital in 2017.