Julie Bornstein raises $50 million for AI fashion search startup

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Retail executive and entrepreneur Julie Bornstein sees generative artificial intelligence as a way to help people find fashion they want to buy.

Her new startup, Daydream, has raised $50 million in seed funding to build a platform that enables people to search for and discover pieces using generative AI, machine learning and computer vision. People can search using natural language prompts — such as “pastel-coloured dresses for a garden party in Charleston”, or “high-end suits for a business conference in NY” — and Daydream will surface options from participating brands. The round was co-led by Forerunner Ventures and Index Ventures with participation from Google Ventures and True Ventures.

“I have always been particularly obsessed with search and personalisation and could not be more excited for the massive gains in AI over the past year,” Bornstein said in a statement. “We can finally build an intelligent online-shopping platform that will make it easy and fun for consumers to find products they love among the best selection of brands and retailers in the world.”

The company is co-founded by a group of execs whose backgrounds span Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Nordstrom, Farfetch and Pinterest: chief technology officer Matt Fisher, chief product officer Dan Cary, chief commercial officer Lisa Green and chief strategy officer Richard Kim. (Both Green and Kim worked at Bornstein’s previous fashion startup The Yes.)

Daydream aims to specifically solve search for the commerce sector. “The search experience has become increasingly cluttered and ineffective. Search is inherently defined by ‘show me options’ — a broken value proposition when the options are infinite — while service is defined by ‘show me the options that are uniquely best for me’, which is exponentially more valuable in the context of the vast pool of what’s available,” says Kirsten Green, founder and managing partner at investor Forerunner. “With AI advancements, we think it’s abundantly clear that we can do so much better. New service offerings have the potential to work in collaboration with consumers to take broad swathes of legwork off of their plates and reshape what’s possible with context-aware discovery.”