Coveo buys Y Combinator alum to bolster AI commerce search

Coveo has acquired a Y Combinator alum as it looks to improve its search and recommendation platform in the age of AI assistants. The news: Montréal-based Coveo acquired Silicon Valley-based Anglera for an undisclosed amount, the company announced on Thursday alongside its second-quarter earnings report. Coveo CFO Karine Hamel said on the company’s earnings call that the acquisition was funded with cash on hand, and that the deal was a “modest upfront investment,” with another potential payment coming in early 2028 based on commercial performance.  Anglera’s platform extracts and manages hundreds of technical attributes from products, such as dimensions, materials, and compatibility. Coveo hopes to make those detailed product specifications more accessible through its intelligent search and recommendation platform, making it easier for AI assistants to find and compare products on behalf of consumers.  From the source: On Coveo’s earnings call, co-founder and CEO Laurent Simoneau said Anglera automates data enrichment that a lot of its customers are struggling to do manually. “Ultimately, it creates a lot of value in the form of additional conversion, revenue per visit, margin, et cetera,” Simoneau said. “The ability to surface content to those external AI assistants in the context of commerce is a growing priority for customers in retail, especially, and we believe that this acquisition will provide a lot of value here.” The context: Coveo’s stock trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol $CVO. Its Q2 earnings report showed an eight-percent revenue jump compared to Q2 last year, with the company earning $40.4 million USD ($56.4 million CAD) in the fiscal period. The company also improved its net loss to $3.1 million USD, up from $4.4 million USD in the same period last year.  Coveo’s stock saw a 1.5-percent bump the morning after its earnings report, trading at $4.84 per share; still a far cry from the $8 per share it was trading at during the same time last year.  Final thought: As more consumers turn to AI assistants to help with their shopping, more companies like Coveo see value in bolstering their generative engine optimization capabilities. Coveo claims that a 30-day Anglera A/B test with an apparel retailer saw a 120-percent jump in organic landing-page traffic to product pages equipped with its extracted data, as well as a 270-percent increase in AI-referred visits, compared to a control group. Feature image courtesy Coveo.The post Coveo buys Y Combinator alum to bolster AI commerce search first appeared on BetaKit.