Chord
AI-native data platform for commerce
- 21-100 employees
- B2B
- Customer service
- SaaS
- API
- Data Analysis
- eCommerce
- Union Square, New York, NY
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Company mission
To give brands the foundation and intelligence to lead, not follow — freeing teams from disconnected tools and unreliable data so they can grow with clarity, speed, and purpose.
Our take
Chord is aiming to become the "Stripe for headless commerce" – an increasingly popular eCommerce architecture in which companies purchase back end infrastructure that’s separated from the front end (head) experience.
The startup, previously known as Arfa, was founded by a pair of former executives from hugely successful D2C beauty products brand Glossier, and has made a strong start since launching in 2019, gaining some high profile customers like August, Caraway, and Another Tomorrow.
Where Chord sees itself as different from most headless commerce platforms is the depth of its customer data infrastructure. It offers a single analytical and visualization layer from data gathered across the entire platform – something that the company has been able to double down on since acquiring eCommerce data startup Yaguara in 2021.
The company has acquired some serious funding that will enable it to expand its data capabilities and support the product’s availability to larger customers. Interestingly, though Chord may have been expected to go for a classic Series B, it has been open in admitting it "wasn't quite there yet", but pursued funding nonetheless to capitalize on the good traction it was experiencing.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Funding (last 2 of 5 rounds)
Mar 2025
$5.5m
EARLY VC
Jan 2023
$15m
SERIES A
Total funding: $56.5m
This company has top investors
Leadership
Bryan Mahoney
(Co-Founder & CEO)Prior to co-founding Chord in 2021, Bryan co-founded arfa where they served as the CTO and GM of Assembly. They also co-founded Dynamo and spent over 3 years at Glossier as a VP of Engineering and as the CTO.