Paris-based startup Lemrock secures €6M to establish itself as the commerce layer for AI agents.

      Founded only a few months ago by two experienced Y Combinator founders and a seasoned retail professional, Lemrock is wagering that AI agents are becoming the new shopping interface, with brands unprepared for this shift. When you inquire about which running shoes to purchase through AI tools like ChatGPT or Perplexity, there needs to be a system ensuring the correct brands are displayed, prices are accurate, and transactions can actually be completed.

      Lemrock, a startup based in Paris and established in 2025, is developing that middleware and has recently secured €6 million ($7 million) to implement it. The funding round was spearheaded by Galion.exe, a seed fund supported by a network of over 400 French tech entrepreneurs. Also participating in this round are notable angels from the retail sector, including Michaël Benabou, co-founder of Veepee (formerly Vente-Privée, a significant player in France's e-commerce landscape); Gary Anssens, founder of the online cycling retailer Alltricks, acquired by Decathlon in 2019; Frédéric Halley, a retail tech investor; Emmanuelle Brizay, who invests in tech and retail; and Antoine Lizée from Alan, a French health insurance scale-up.

      Importantly, Jean-Baptiste Rudelle, co-founder of Criteo, a Parisian adtech leader that popularized programmatic advertising, not only invested through his role on Galion.exe’s investment committee but also joined the board of directors at Lemrock.

      Lemrock’s concept is simple: e-commerce is shifting from search engines and brand websites to conversational AI interfaces, and the necessary infrastructure for brands to operate in this new environment is still lacking. The startup provides a unified integration point linking a retailer's product catalogue to major AI platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity, managing real-time pricing and availability, transaction processing, and performance tracking within a single framework. Brands retain control over their data, pricing, and product presentations.

      The founders aim to address a structural problem. Lemrock asserts that some retailers are already seeing up to a 30% decline in traffic as customers transition from Google searches to inquiries through AI agents. The rationale is clear: if customers aren’t visiting your website, you need to be accessible and able to complete transactions wherever your customers are.

      “Conversational commerce changes the dynamic: it shifts from customers searching for products to the right products reaching the right customers,” remarked Roxane Laigle, CEO of Lemrock. “Our technology enables brands to sell more effectively, while consumers can purchase in a way that is quicker, fairer, and less frictional.”

      Lemrock's co-founders each bring unique qualifications that align well with the challenges they aim to tackle. Laigle has over ten years of experience in B2C growth and retail, previously working at Fnac Darty. CPO Sasha Collin and CTO Clément Nguyen are both alumni of Y Combinator’s S24 batch, where they co-founded Mindely, an AI-driven interviewing platform. Collin has three years of experience at QuantumBlack, McKinsey’s AI branch, while Nguyen comes from a background in adtech and retailtech, having worked at Rakuten Advertising. The company is officially registered as Lemrock AI SAS, having been incorporated in December 2025 and is located near Paris.

      Lemrock has also been chosen for Agoranov, one of Europe's prominent deeptech incubators, which lends institutional credibility to the team’s qualifications.

      The broader landscape is competitive yet still developing. Perplexity has been enhancing its own commerce features, and several early-stage startups, such as New Era of Shopping based in Budapest and San Francisco, are pursuing similar markets. What Lemrock is offering is a vendor-neutral middleware layer rather than a rival storefront: one integration for multiple AI platforms, designed with brand safety in mind.