Tech for Retail Awards 2025: Innovations revolutionising the shopping experience

At the 'Tech for Retail 2025' trade fair in Paris, Albatross, Neuralk, POWER.xyz, and Dealt were recognised for their technological innovations. The start-ups impressed with real-time AI, predictive analytics, generative 3D content and home-related services. These solutions are designed to make retail more efficient, personalised, and experiential.

The 'Tech for Retail Awards 2025' ceremony took place at the Place des Innovations. This served as a central hub for the members of the four juries, who were impressed by the start-ups' innovation and agility.

“Today, you have to act very quickly. The juries do not automatically choose large-scale solutions, as smaller companies often address specific needs,” explained Mike Hadjadj, founder of La Retail Tech and organiser of the event, to FashionUnited. “We received very diverse and sophisticated applications.” What appeals to people are AI-driven innovations and solutions that can be deployed immediately and have references, concrete results, and a return on investment (ROI).

Innovation award 2025: Albatross, real-time inspirational AI that enables discovery

Founded by former Amazon AI executives and based in Switzerland, Albatross recently raised 12.5 million dollars to develop an AI model that continuously learns from users' browsing behaviour.

“Personalisation has not changed much in the last 15 years. It is still based on three strategies: popularity, user similarity, and product similarity. All these strategies look to the past,” explains co-founder Kevin Kahn.

To counteract this, Albatross highlights original and contextually relevant content in real time, turning each session into a journey of discovery.

Albatross helps bring new products or designers to the attention of potential customers who are not yet familiar with them. This increases the appeal of platforms and supports creatives who recognise the value of publishing on platforms with direct user contact.

Albatross claims that its content feed generates an increase in engagement of over 400 percent and has enabled the purchase of hundreds of thousands of items that would otherwise have remained undiscovered.

Start-up award: Neuralk, predictive AI for data scientists

Neuralk is a predictive tool for data scientists that helps companies to fully leverage the potential of their product, customer, and transaction data.

It is based on a foundational model—a large-scale AI trained on extensive data—and specialises in data processing and structuring to generate structured and actionable insights.

This proprietary technology is particularly suitable for the luxury sector, where data volumes are often small. Thanks to its pre-training, Neuralk unlocks new use cases and significantly improves ROI.

“AI teams from groups like LVMH, L’Oréal, and Chanel are now approaching us with specific tasks. These include forecasting sales; stock levels; repeat purchases; or the performance of new products without historical data, as they come from new collections,” explains Théo Marcolini, senior account executive.

For example, a luxury brand wanted to predict the purchase intent for a second product. By analysing the first purchase and the customer's history, Neuralk was able to anticipate which item would be purchased next, thereby increasing sales.

Gen AI award: POWER.xyz, 3D and generative AI for unlimited content

POWER.xyz was founded three years ago in Angers, France, and is based at the Station F incubator. The 3D asset platform specialises in visual commerce and creating unlimited content, based entirely on generative AI. It offers brands a promising solution to visually transform their offering. This allows them to produce rich, interactive, and immersive content and enhance the digital customer experience.

The platform consists of three complementary modules: a simplified workflow for creating and generating extensive 3D catalogues; the development of immersive experiences such as 3D viewers, interactive configurators, and augmented reality tools; and a virtual studio that generates packshots, videos, and lifestyle visuals in an instant.

With just one 3D asset, a company can realise over ten use cases. “We work with brands like Saint Laurent, Gucci, and Decathlon, enabling them to generate unlimited content by combining 3D and AI,” explains Clément Foucher, co-founder of POWER.xyz. “In other words, photoshoots are unnecessary. We scan a product to obtain a photorealistic representation. This allows the brand to generate unlimited content on any scale.”

Customer experience award: Dealt expands retail offering with home services and product insurance

Dealt offers retailers and e-commerce companies a comprehensive platform, Dealt Home Services, for providing home-related services. These include delivery, installation, assembly, maintenance, and repair. The company also markets Dealt Care, a range of product insurance policies. These policies cover breakage, defects, extended warranties, and home warranty protection for multiple devices in the same household.

This positioning is particularly relevant, as it allows retailers to offer these services in addition to selling products. This strengthens customer loyalty, differentiates the offering, and increases added value. As proof of its commercial potential, the French company Dealt raised six million euros in its first financing round in June 2024 to accelerate its growth.

“We offer an additional network of service providers (Dealt Connect) that enables brands and retailers to connect with professionals from all trades: electricians; plumbers; landscape gardeners; bicycle mechanics; etc.,” explains Mickael Braconnier, CEO and co-founder of Dealt. “They can build their own network or expand their existing one to develop new services or cover new geographical areas.”

So far, Dealt is not yet focusing on the fashion and accessories sector, as repairs are often carried out in workshops rather than at home. However, the company serves numerous retail customers, particularly in the home appliance sector.

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