Founded recently by two experienced Y Combinator founders and a retail expert, Lemrock is focusing on AI agents as the new storefront, recognizing that brands are unprepared for this shift. When you inquire with ChatGPT or Perplexity about which running shoes to buy, someone ensures the correct brands appear, the prices are accurate, and the transaction can be completed. Paris-based Lemrock, established in 2025, develops that middleware and has just secured €6 million ($7 million) for its deployment.
The funding round was led by Galion.exe, a seed fund supported by over 400 French tech founders. A group of retail-savvy investors joined the round, including Michaël Benabou (co-founder of Veepee), Gary Anssens (founder of Alltricks, acquired by Decathlon), Frédéric Halley, Emmanuelle Brizay, and Antoine Lizée from Alan. Jean-Baptiste Rudelle, co-founder of Criteo, not only invested but also joined Lemrock’s board.
Lemrock’s straightforward premise is that e-commerce is shifting from search engines and brand websites to conversational AI interfaces, lacking the infrastructure brands need to sell in this new environment. The startup provides a single integration point that links a retailer’s product catalogue to major AI platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. This system manages real-time pricing and availability, transaction processing, and performance tracking, allowing brands to control their data, pricing, and product presentation.
Lemrock identifies a structural opportunity since some retailers already experience traffic declines of up to 30% as consumers transition from Google searches to AI queries. The rationale is simple: if customers aren’t visiting your website, you must be accessible and operational where they are.
“Conversational commerce reverses the logic: it’s no longer the customer searching for the product; it’s the right product coming to the right customer,” said Roxane Laigle, Lemrock’s CEO. “Our technology allows brands to sell better, and consumers to buy better, faster, more fairly, and with less friction.”
Lemrock was founded by three individuals with complementary expertise. Laigle brings over a decade of B2C growth and retail experience, having worked at Fnac Darty. CPO Sasha Collin and CTO Clément Nguyen, veterans of Y Combinator’s S24 batch, co-founded Mindely, an AI-powered interviewing platform. Collin has experience at QuantumBlack, McKinsey’s AI division, while Nguyen’s background is in adtech and retailtech, having worked at Rakuten Advertising. Legally registered as Lemrock AI SAS and incorporated in December 2025, the company is headquartered near Paris.
Lemrock has been chosen for Agoranov, a leading European deeptech incubator, adding institutional validation to their credentials. The broader context is a competitive yet emerging market. Perplexity is developing its own commerce features, and early-stage startups like New Era of Shopping from Budapest and San Francisco are exploring similar areas. Lemrock’s approach is a vendor-neutral middleware layer, providing one integration for multiple AI platforms, designed to be brand-safe.