eBay Ventures Invests In AI Search Optimization Co Azoma
AI search optimization company Azoma gets $4M funding boost from eBay Ventures and others, helping the company expand offerings enabling brands to make content more visible in AI overviews and chatbots like ChatGPT.
Azoma, founded in 2022, has developed two patented technologies for AI optimization.
One is what it calls a "digital twin" to simulate how brands appear in AI chatbot responses. Since most conversations with chatbots are private, Azoma creates profiles of people matching a client's target customer demographic, then uses those to submit a "very large volume" of prompts to see what the chatbot says about a brand.
But the Azoma's second solution is likely of more specific interest to eBay as it it allows brands and retailers to generate content, like product listings, that are optimized to appear in AI search results and chatbot answers.
This latest investment marks continued expansion into AI and SaaS companies, with Global Head of the company's investment arm, Henri Jaanimaegi, recently telling Global Venturing that he sees eBay Ventures as a way for the 30 year old legacy ecommerce incumbent to move faster and make more daring decisions in their efforts to keep up with competitors like StockX, Whatnot, Vinted and more.
Jaanimaegi cofounded eBay Ventures in 2022 to help the parent company tap external ideas and remain current.
“I wanted to see if there were ways for us to move faster and take more daring decisions,” he explains.
“EBay has deep knowledge, experience, and global reach, yet there was a clear opportunity to engage more actively with innovation across the startup ecosystem and strengthen our visibility into important external signals and developments.”
Additionally, the processes that existed within the corporate meant that it wasn’t nimble enough to act fast in the face of an opportunity.
“The idea of establishing a venture arm which could move faster, be more daring, more innovative was almost a no-brainer. The next step was ensuring the organisation aligned around this approach,” says Jaanimaegi.
At the start, it was about investing in marketplace adjacent businesses. For example, we invested in the Australian designer fashion rental marketplace The Volte,” says Jaanimaegi. But this style of investing changed once he realised there was trust in his team from eBay.
It meant they could look at startups that were creating technologies that would help them catch up with their competition. Speed became a critical component here.
“We try to move fast, and we’ve slightly loosened the need for commercial partnership as a prerequisite for investment,” says Jaanimaegi.
eBay Ventures' other recent AI investments include Ecomtent and AI coding platform Poolside.
Liz Morton
Funding these companies has obvious benefits for eBay, whose own AI efforts have often faltered, lagged behind competitors, and failed to live up to the hype of press releases and earnings calls.
Interestingly, eBay recently updated their robots.txt file to include a new “Robot & Agent Policy” providing guidance and guardrails for how AI agents should interact with the site, a clear sign that the company is giving greater thought to how listings and other pages may be shown in chatbot and agentic experiences.
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But eBay Ventures' other investments have been more hit or miss.
Their first investment was Norwegian second-hand marketplace Tise in July 2022, which eBay later acquired in 2025.
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Followed by investments in UK-based luxury resale outlet Cudoni and digital fan experience platform Notable Live both in January 2023.
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Sadly, the Cudoni investment did not pay off - just 3 months after raising £7.5 million ($9 million) in funding, the company announced it was going out of business effective immediately in April 2023.
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eBay Ventures joined Dick's Sporting Goods in investing in pre-owned sporting goods and equipment marketplace SidelineSwap in May 2023.
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Australian luxury fashion rental app The Volte received funding from eBay Ventures in May 2023 as well.
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And in October 2023, eBay pushed further into payments, backing UK Buy Now, Pay Later company Zilch.
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On the tech side, eBay Ventures has also partnered with TechStars on the Future of Ecommerce pre-seed accelerator program for early stage startups which announced its inaugural cohort of founders in October 2023.
Liz Morton
eBay x Techstars is joined in this pre-Series A funding round for Azoma by Ignite Ventures, Rank Ventures, Twinpath, MaRS ISF, and angel investors.
Azoma says they plan to use the fresh capital to invest in R&D and expand its commercial operations by hiring for sales and customer success roles.
