firmly Raises $15M Series A for Merchant AI Commerce

The destination switches in firmly's merchant dashboard give the retailer a decision worth keeping: where its products can be sold. As shopping moves into AI conversations and other digital surfaces, the Seattle commerce company is offering to carry more of the integration work while the store keeps control of its catalog, customers and sale.

That proposition now has a $15M Series A led by Squarepoint Capital behind it. Announced November 5, 2026, the financing includes J.P. Morgan Payments, Mastercard and Samsung NEXT, alongside other investors, and brings total funding to approximately $20M according to firmly. The company also introduced Ask Agent, a conversational shopping product for merchants' own websites.

For a retailer, those two products address connected commercial decisions. One helps the store reach customers shopping somewhere else; the other helps customers already on the website describe what they want and move toward a purchase. Both depend on a merchant being willing to extend its business into another interface while continuing to own the obligations attached to an order.

What firmly's Series A finances

The investment will support the global expansion of firmly Connect across merchants and destinations, including AI agents, marketplaces, social networks and shoppable advertising. Joining the lead and strategic participants are Alumni Ventures, ARK Invest, Benhamou Global Ventures, Granada Funds, Hike Ventures, The Mercantile Companies and Versus Ventures. The announcement leaves valuation and detailed financing terms undisclosed.

firmly's three co-founders bring experience from earlier commerce infrastructure. CEO Kumar N Senthil previously led Samsung eCommerce product, while CTO Murali Krishnamurthy served as an architect for Samsung's commerce systems. President Damien Balsan co-founded Loop Pay, which Samsung acquired. Their current assignment extends that commerce work into places where the shopping interface may belong to another company.

Mastercard and J.P. Morgan Payments participating in the financing gives the round a direct connection to payment institutions. firmly's commercial promise still includes merchants keeping their payment provider and merchant-of-record status. That combination is useful context for the financing, although the announcement supplies no basis for inferring exclusive distribution agreements or the investors' individual returns expectations.

The capital therefore follows a business proposition with several parties to serve. The merchant wants another source of demand without losing control of the sale, while the destination wants a route from discovery to an order. firmly is taking responsibility for the infrastructure joining those interests, with expansion requiring more merchants and more destinations to find the connection worth maintaining.

Connect moves integration work closer to the supplier

firmly Connect allows merchants to select destinations and decide which products appear in them. Its current onboarding description includes business verification, catalog configuration, a merchant agreement, security setup and final approval. The company handles the technical connection; the retailer still makes decisions about the business it is putting through that connection.

That distinction gives the no-code proposition some practical meaning. A merchant can avoid assigning engineers to build each destination integration while retaining work around permissions, product information and readiness to sell. Moving the engineering assignment to a specialist changes who must keep the connection running as shopping channels and protocols develop.

The merchant-of-record relationship matters after the initial click. firmly describes a model in which the retailer retains its payment provider, customer relationship and transaction data. For the buyer, this preserves a recognizable seller behind the purchase; for the retailer, it makes another distribution channel easier to consider alongside existing operations.

Connect also sits within a longer commercial history. The company's March 2026 launch announcement documented its Aurus partnership and included a Backcountry account of adopting the platform. Those relationships show the company working through existing retail infrastructure, where an additional channel must fit a merchant's catalog, payment arrangements and operating priorities.

Ask Agent starts inside the retailer's own store

The newly launched Ask Agent gives firmly a product for the merchant's website as well as outside shopping destinations. Customers can describe what they need in natural language, with recommendations based on the store's current catalog, prices and inventory. The company describes support for checkout, loyalty, related-product selling and post-purchase service.

The product's current page describes several checkout choices, including handing a filled cart to the merchant's checkout or completing the purchase inside the conversation. That flexibility leaves the retailer with a decision about how far the assistant should carry a customer through the store. A useful answer and a completed order remain different moments in the same relationship.

firmly says merchants can add Ask Agent with a single line of JavaScript. For operators evaluating the product, the integration promise belongs alongside questions about catalog accuracy, available products and the treatment of requests the assistant cannot answer. The site's demonstrations and sample dashboards are illustrations, rather than evidence of a named customer's sales results.

The distinction between the two products also explains the expansion opportunity. Connect brings the merchant into other destinations, while Ask Agent puts conversational discovery on a surface the merchant already controls. firmly can pursue both routes with a shared commercial premise: the store should remain responsible for, and connected to, the customer whose order it accepts.

A wider network carries a merchant's continuing obligations

firmly reports that its infrastructure can help channels access more than 11M merchants representing more than $900B in GMV. Those figures describe claimed reach across the connected commerce opportunity, rather than completed transactions through firmly or its revenue. The public announcement provides no financial basis for calculating how much of that opportunity the company currently captures.

There is commercial history behind the new financing. GeekWire reported the Perplexity relationship in March 2025, when firmly had previously raised $5.2M. Furniture.com announced a multi-brand checkout partnership later that year, giving the infrastructure another application in an existing shopping destination.

Related DevCuration coverage of Pliant's payment infrastructure for AI workflows follows the account and permission relationships carried into a different financial interface. firmly approaches the commerce side of that work, carrying a merchant's products and checkout into another place where a customer may decide to buy. The businesses serve different jobs, and no partnership between them is implied.

For Kumar N Senthil, Damien Balsan and Murali Krishnamurthy, the financing supports a growing set of those connections. A retailer can switch on another destination and still have the next inventory change, customer question and accepted order arrive back inside its own business. As firmly expands, that continuing flow gives the company a daily reason to remain useful to the store.