Investing in Vody and the Future of AI Powered Retail Search

June 19, 2025

By The Artemis Fund
The Artemis Fund believes technology can create prosperity for all. With offices in New York, Texas, Massachusetts, and Nevada, Artemis leads seed rounds for companies creating resilient families, individuals, and businesses across the US.
You’re getting dressed for a new job and realize you need black work pants that aren’t leggings. Or you’ve just moved into a new apartment and want a small lamp that fits your nightstand and your style. You head to a major retailer’s site, type in exactly what you need, and the results are all over the place. It’s not that retailers don’t have the right products. It’s that their data isn’t structured in a way that helps search engines understand what you’re actually asking for.
That’s why we’re thrilled to announce our investment in Vody, a company using generative AI to help retailers make their product data smarter and more usable. Vody transforms messy, inconsistent catalog data into structured, enriched information that search engines and recommendation systems can actually understand. Their platform connects retail data to large language models, making it easy to power better SEO, marketing, and personalization, without rebuilding internal systems from scratch. In short, Vody is the infrastructure layer that helps retailers turn data into discovery.
Generative AI is rapidly transforming the retail landscape, unlocking new paths to personalization, discovery, and efficiency. The market for generative AI in retail is already valued at $38B and is expected to exceed $1T by 2034.

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At the core of this transformation is contextual search: moving e-commerce from rigid keyword matching to intuitive, intent-driven product discovery. Vody’s models interpret complex, human-language queries and return highly relevant results that boost engagement and reduce cart abandonment. Their platform enriches structured and unstructured product data, making catalogs more searchable, personalized, and conversion-optimized.
Vody is led by a seasoned founding team with deep expertise in both AI and retail. CEO Stephanie Horbaczewski is a second-time founder with a nine-figure exit at StyleHaul and a proven ability to attract top-tier talent. CTO Andrew Stanton previously served as Head of ML & Search at Etsy, where he built large-scale systems for product discovery. Chief Science Officer Dr. Yubin Kim brings deep search expertise, with prior experience at Etsy and a PhD in search from Carnegie Mellon.
The Opportunity
43% of e-commerce shoppers use search as their primary navigation tool.
49% have made impulse buys based on AI-driven recommendations.
Personalization drives up to a 15% boost in conversion and a 20% lift in satisfaction.
The Solution
Vody delivers adaptive AI infrastructure purpose-built for commerce. By fine-tuning large language and vision-language models to specific verticals like apparel, home goods, and travel, Vody enables retailers to structure, enrich, and personalize their product data at scale. Their flexible model architecture supports seamless integration with open-source models, while a scalable API allows customers to batch-process catalog data for use cases like attribute generation, similarity matching, and personalized recommendations.
Vody’s proprietary approach to data labeling leverages real-time consumer language (from product pages to reviews to search queries) ensuring that product catalogs are aligned with how shoppers actually browse and buy. The result is a continuously refreshed, deeply contextual product data layer that powers better search, smarter SEO, and more relevant customer experiences across the retail funnel.
The Impact
Vody enables retailers to sell more of what they already have, reducing reliance on deep discounts and excess inventory. Improved data structure also powers more accurate forecasting and more relevant recommendations, which means fewer unsold items, fewer markdowns, and less waste ending up in landfills.
Artemis is backing the next generation of infrastructure companies powering smarter commerce. Vody’s mission aligns with our belief that scalable AI systems can lead to both economic and environmental progress, and we’re proud to join them on the journey.
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