Set up by an ex-Google employee, Reflektion's customer data and insights enable businesses to influence customers at every relevant point of engagement. It may be the time of mobile phones and apps, but business websites are often the primary point for prospective customers to gather information. There are ad-tech companies that track why people visit a particular website and target them with relevant advertising. However, this form of technology is relevant to a media or publishing company. What about businesses keen to understand the profile of traffic coming to their website and convert them to prospective leads?

From the outside looking in, shopping hasn't changed all that much in the past decade. Sure, it's more common now to find a brick-and-mortar synced efficiently with its online presence (Target is great at this). But those still seem to be the exception to the rule. Proving once again that there isn't a space that can't be reshaped by AI, our friends at CB Insights mapped the startups disrupting retail and e-commerce using artificial intelligence (AI). Syncing online and real-world inventories is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to converting retail to a 21st-century endeavor.

Artificial intelligence is now touching all industries, from healthcare and advertising to entertainment and ed tech. The retail space in particular is buzzing with news, thanks to plans for an "Amazon Go Store," where shoppers can grab items off shelves and walk out, bypassing a long line at check out. Computer vision algorithms will track the items that were picked and charge the customer's credit card. Other retail giants are taking note too, with eBay partnering with Google Home to demo a shopping concierge, India-based Titan partnering with IBM Watson to drive sales, and Etsy acquiring AI startup Blackbird Technologies in Q4'16. "If you don't have an AI strategy, you're going to die." – Devin Wenig, CEO of eBay, at Shoptalk'17 Among private AI companies, commerce is the No. 3 category for deals since 2012, after healthcare and horizontal applications (startups working across multiple industries).

One-to-one customer engagement enabled by machine learning yields a 13 percent reduction in bounce rate and a 33 percent average order value improvement at Marmot. A recent study from Gallup shed light on just how valuable it is to invest in customer engagement. Fully engaged customers, defined as those who have had a measurable reaction, connection, or experience with your brand, represent a 23 percent share of wallet, profitability, revenue, and relationship growth premium compared to average shoppers. By contrast, the study found that disengaged customers -- those who have no emotional connection to your brand -- represent a 13 percent discount in those same measures. It's no surprise that customer engagement and loyalty applications have been hot in retail, particularly e-commerce, where customer data is easier to gather and easier to analyze than in any other channel.

Reflektion*–which delivers innovative "individualized commerce" technology for retailers–recently announced it has raised 18 million in Series B financing led by Battery Ventures. Here, Powered by Battery chats with CEO Sean Moran about the how the company is aiming to transform digital retail, partly by leveraging new types of artificial-intelligence technologies. Powered by Battery: We hear a lot about "personalization" and predictive analytics when it comes to online retail. How does Reflektion and "individualized commerce" fit in? What exactly do you do?