Former Spotify engineers secure $10M to overhaul e-commerce personalization

Sidd Motwani, Ian Anderson, and Shivaditya Sinha spent years refining the infrastructure that powers recommendations for Spotify’s 800 million users. Their new venture, Malachyte, seeks to solve the stagnation in online retail, where storefronts often rely on outdated demographic segments or rigid purchase histories. Unlike traditional models that wait for overnight data aggregation, Malachyte’s "two-headed" AI interprets every hover, click, and search refinement to adjust product displays in milliseconds.

"A search for a heavy-duty boot followed by two clicks on steel-toed footwear is enough to move work pants and gloves up the page," explained Motwani, the company's CEO. By analyzing contextual signals—such as the time of day or the device being used—the system builds a dynamic profile without requiring a customer to be logged in. Following a testing period with over 20 enterprise clients, the technology became available to Shopify merchants in June 2026. The $10 million seed round was co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Gradient, with additional backing from Harpoon Ventures.