For retailers, e-commerce is a bit of a puzzle at the moment. Online shopping trends are expected to stay strong this year, so companies can’t afford to curtail their e-commerce budgets, but at the same time, e-commerce is more fragmented than ever before. There is a seemingly endless number of avenues to exploit — from social media companies like TikTok launching shopping, to established marketplaces, live shopping, and owned channels — and search as a channel is fading as SEO algorithms and the massive influx of content makes it hard to find what you’re looking for..

对于零售商来说，电子商务目前有点令人困惑。预计今年网络购物趋势将保持强劲，因此公司无法削减电子商务预算，但与此同时，电子商务比以往任何时候都更加分散。从TikTok等社交媒体公司推出购物，到已建立的市场、现场购物和自有渠道，似乎有无数的途径可供利用，而搜索作为一种渠道正在衰落，因为SEO算法和大量内容的涌入使得很难找到你要找的东西。。

But it’s 2024, and if there’s one thing that’s purported to be a solution for almost any problem, it’s AI. It makes sense then that Daydream, a new e-commerce search engine that uses AI to make search more personalized and useful for people, has raised a massive $50 million seed round.

但现在是2024年，如果说有一件事可以解决几乎任何问题的话，那就是人工智能。那么，一个新的电子商务搜索引擎“白日梦”是有道理的，它使用人工智能使搜索更加个性化，对人们更有用，已经筹集了5000万美元的巨额种子资金。

Founded by e-commerce veteran Julie Bornstein, Daydream focuses on providing personalized shopping results by using generative AI, machine learning, and computer vision. The company plans to offer up the platform in beta to consumers in the U.S. this fall, and will concentrate on the fashion vertical for the time being.

由电子商务老手朱莉·伯恩斯坦（JulieBornstein）创立的Daydream专注于通过使用生成人工智能、机器学习和计算机视觉提供个性化购物结果。该公司计划在今年秋季向美国消费者提供测试版平台，目前将专注于时尚垂直领域。

It has already onboarded more than 2,000 brands, including Net-A-Porter, Altuzarra, Jimmy Choo, Doen, Alo Yoga, and La DoubleJ..

它已经拥有2000多个品牌，包括Net-A-Porter、Altuzarra、Jimmy Choo、Doen、Alo Yoga和La DoubleJ。。

Daydream essentially lets one search for products using natural language and image recognition — think queries like “I’m going to a wedding in Costa Rica in the summer, and I need some suggestions of what to wear.” You can even upload an image of a piece of clothing and provide an additional filter with conversational language, such as “I want this in blue.” .

“白日梦”基本上可以让人们使用自然语言和图像识别来搜索产品，比如“我要在夏天去哥斯达黎加参加婚礼，我需要一些穿什么的建议。”你甚至可以上传一件衣服的图像，并提供一个带有会话语言的附加过滤器，例如“我想要蓝色的。”。

Forerunner Ventures and Index Ventures co-led the round, which also saw participation from Google Ventures and True Ventures. The startup did not disclose its valuation.

先行者风险投资公司和指数风险投资公司共同领导了这一轮投资，谷歌风险投资公司和True Ventures也参与了这一轮投资。这家初创公司没有透露其估值。

A new way to search

一种新的搜索方式

Bornstein, who has held executive positions at companies like Nordstrom, Urban Outfitters, Sephora and Stitch Fix, believes that the current search tools available in e-commerce feel dry and aren’t personalized. While she acknowledged that there have been some advances thanks to the rise of Gen AI, she stressed that generalized search engines often don’t give accurate results..

Bornstein曾在Nordstrom、Urban Outfitters、Sephora和Stitch Fix等公司担任高管职位，他认为目前电子商务中可用的搜索工具感觉枯燥，没有个性化。虽然她承认，由于人工智能的兴起，已经取得了一些进展，但她强调，通用搜索引擎通常不会给出准确的结果。。

“We’ve trained [consumers] over the last 20 years to figure out the right taxonomic word from our site to find what you’re looking for. When ChatGPT launched, people working in the space for a long time thought that this [tech] allows us to leverage language and images together in a way that allows you to express, as a consumer, what it is you need,” she said..

她说：“过去20年来，我们一直在训练[消费者]从我们的网站中找出正确的分类词，以找到你想要的东西。当ChatGPT推出时，长期从事该领域工作的人们认为，这项[技术]使我们能够将语言和图像结合起来，让你作为消费者表达你的需求。”。。

To fix that, Daydream is fine-tuning off-the-shelf models and creating a detailed dataset of product catalogs combined with the team’s deep understanding of the fashion world. Bornstein believes with this kind of data set, natural language queries could give better results.

为了解决这个问题，Daydream正在微调现成的模型，并创建一个详细的产品目录数据集，同时结合团队对时尚世界的深刻理解。Bornstein认为，使用这种数据集，自然语言查询可以产生更好的结果。

For her part, Bornstein realizes that the idea the startup is working on is not unique, and said good execution, tuning good models, and building a great user interface is key for the company to stand out.

就她而言，Bornstein意识到这家初创公司正在研究的想法并不是独一无二的，她说，良好的执行力、调整良好的模型以及构建良好的用户界面是该公司脱颖而出的关键。

Daydream is indeed entering a crowded space. Large companies like Amazon, Google, Mastercard, and TikTok are already employing different kinds of AI tech for their shopping platforms. You also have startups such as True Fit, which focuses on finding the right fit for shoppers, and Remark, which trains AI personas based on human shopping experts.

白日梦确实进入了一个拥挤的空间。亚马逊（Amazon）、谷歌（Google）、万事达卡（Mastercard）和TikTok等大公司已经在其购物平台上采用了各种人工智能技术。。

Google has even offered a somewhat similar way to search for a while now, and at a smaller scale, e-commerce startups like Deft and Cherry have tried to combine image and text searches to find relevant items to shop. .

谷歌甚至在一段时间内提供了一种类似的搜索方式，而在较小的规模上，像Deft和Cherry这样的电子商务初创公司试图将图像和文本搜索结合起来，找到相关的购物项目。

Forerunner Ventures’s Kirsten Green believes that Google and Amazon provide uninspired and inefficient search tools for shopping, and that the only personalization offered by many e-commerce companies is in the form of ads. She thinks that Daydream has an opportunity to build special experiences with deep personalization..

Forefunner Ventures的柯尔斯滕·格林（Kirsten Green）认为，谷歌（Google）和亚马逊（Amazon）为购物提供了缺乏创意且效率低下的搜索工具，许多电子商务公司提供的唯一个性化服务是广告。她认为，白日梦有机会通过深度个性化构建特殊体验。。

“The experience Daydream will deliver reflects the user’s preferences and becomes more and more tailored as detail and pattern recognition grows. It also offers the potential to consider a far wider set of products while still delivering a specialty store experience.” Green told TechCrunch over an email..

“白日梦将提供的体验反映了用户的偏好，并随着细节和模式识别的增长而变得越来越个性化。它还提供了考虑更广泛产品集的潜力，同时仍能提供特色商店体验。”格林在电子邮件中告诉TechCrunch。。

Frédérique Dame, general partner at Google Ventures, thinks that Daydream will have an edge in the market because customers expect tailored experiences. She added that the company has an experienced team to tackle all challenges of user adoption.

谷歌风险投资公司（Google Ventures）的普通合伙人弗雷德里克·达姆（Frédérique Dame）认为，白日梦将在市场上占据优势，因为客户希望获得量身定制的体验。她补充说，该公司拥有一支经验丰富的团队来应对用户采用的所有挑战。

Fortunately for Daydream, its team does have ample experience in building AI, search tech and e-commerce tools. Bornstein herself sold her last AI-powered shopping service, The Yes, to Pinterest, and her chief product officer, Dan Cary, previously worked at Google’s AI research group. Daydream’s CTO is Matt Fisher, who led data and applied science at Microsoft; its chief commercial officer is Lisa Green, who has worked in tech, fashion, and business development at Google, The Yes, and Condé Nast; and its chief strategy officer is Richard Kim, who was the head of shopping strategy and operations at Pinterest..

幸运的是，它的团队在构建人工智能、搜索技术和电子商务工具方面拥有丰富的经验。Bornstein自己将最后一项人工智能购物服务Yes卖给了Pinterest，她的首席产品官DanCary之前曾在谷歌的人工智能研究小组工作。《白日梦》的首席技术官是马特·费舍尔，他在微软领导数据和应用科学；；其首席战略官是Richard Kim，他是Pinterest的购物战略和运营主管。。

Bornstein said that a lot of the fresh capital would be used to hire engineering talent and scale fast. The company currently has 23 employees and plans to increase that number to 35 by the end of the year.

Bornstein表示，大量新资金将用于雇佣工程人才并迅速扩大规模。该公司目前有23名员工，并计划在年底前将这一数字增加到35名。

She added that Daydream doesn’t plan to fulfill orders and will act simply as a discovery layer for shopping, so it will rely on commission-based revenue at the moment and is not looking to generate any ad-based revenue. Also, because it’s a discovery layer, white-labeling its technology, like visual fashion-focused search company Stye, is a possibility down the road..

她补充说，Daydream不打算完成订单，只是作为购物的发现层，因此目前它将依赖佣金收入，不打算产生任何基于广告的收入。此外，由于它是一个发现层，因此白色标签技术，如专注视觉时尚的搜索公司Stye，在未来是可能的。。