Canadian retail tech company Thri5 has secured C$5.4m, or $3.9m, in seed funding following a pilot and subsequent rollout with US-based Wild Fork Foods. The round was co-led by Whitecap Venture Partners and Mistral Venture Partners, with participation from MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund, N49P and a group of retail and technology veterans. Thri5 said it will use the funding to grow its engineering, product and commercial teams and to expand its go-to-market activity with enterprise retailers globally. The raise follows a nine-week pilot with Wild Fork Foods in which Thri5 reported a 3% lift in sales, a 3.6% increase in profit and a 2.0 percentage point improvement in inventory accuracy, after which Wild Fork rolled out Thri5 across its store network in the US and Canada. Thri5 describes its product as an AI-native execution layer that sits above a retailer's existing technology stack, and the company estimates the total value at stake from execution leakage can represent 10%-20% of sales. Thri5 was founded in Toronto by Herman Paek and CEO Jeremy Pee, who previously co-founded Loblaw Digital.
