Company May 19, 2026 Zoovu Acquires XGEN AI to Create One AI-Native Engine for Ecommerce Product Discovery The combined company unifies search, recommendations, personalization, guided selling, bundling, and conversational AI on a single engine — already proven across the world's leading brands, retailers, and manufacturers. Zoovu, the AI platform for product discovery, today announced its acquisition of XGEN AI, a leader in search, merchandising, and recommendations for the world's top consumer brands. Together, the two companies form a single AI-native engine for ecommerce product discovery, built to serve every shopper, every catalog, and every moment. The problem: Ecommerce product discovery is fragmented Most enterprise brands today run product discovery on a stack of five to seven disconnected vendors, resulting in inconsistent shopper experiences and measurable conversion loss. Zoovu and XGEN AI end that fragmentation by unifying search, guided selling, bundling, recommendations, and conversational AI on one data model, one set of merchandising rules, one personalization layer, and one source of truth for analytics. The answer: One AI-native engine "The next generation of product discovery isn't a stack — it's an engine, with AI at its core rather than bolted on," said Jonathan Taylor, CEO of Zoovu. "It learns from every shopper interaction across experiences such as search, email, and recommendations, and applies that learning everywhere, instantly. It works as well for a luxury fashion shopper exploring a new collection as it does for a Honeywell buyer specifying industrial equipment." The combined company enables ecommerce teams to deliver more relevant product discovery experiences that improve conversion, AOV, and customer engagement at scale for B2C and B2B enterprises. "Zoovu and XGEN AI share the same conviction: that AI in ecommerce should serve the shopper and the business, not lock either one into a black box," said Mark Steele, CEO of XGEN AI. "Joining Zoovu lets us deliver conversational AI search alongside guided buying, bundling, and AI assistants — all on one ecommerce revenue engine. It gives our customers a single platform that grows with them." "Zoovu has built one of the most differentiated AI-native platforms in enterprise ecommerce, and the addition of XGEN AI accelerates its leadership in a category that is rapidly consolidating around AI," said Alex Malvone, partner at FTV Capital. "We are proud to back Jonathan and the team as they bring together two AI-native businesses to define the future of product discovery." Capabilities from both platforms are already in production at global enterprise brands, including Valentino, Ferragamo, and Microsoft, with reported outcomes that include significant improvements in search conversion and recommendation performance, as well as a 25% lift in add-to-cart rate for Microsoft. The acquisition is backed by FTV Capital, a leading sector-focused growth equity firm and Zoovu's lead investor. The investment underscores FTV's continued conviction in Zoovu's strategy to build the category-defining ecommerce revenue engine for enterprise product discovery. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. What the combined platform does The combined Zoovu + XGEN platform unifies the capabilities enterprise brands previously had to combine from multiple vendors: AI search and merchandising — vector, visual, knowledge graph, and generative relevance models combined with conversational AI and with merchandiser control over every ranking decision and experience. Personalization and recommendations — 1:1 product predictions, algorithmic recommendations, and omnichannel recommendations across onsite and lifecycle email, served at enterprise scale. Guided buying, bundling and configuration — high-accuracy attribute mapping, decisioning, and configuration trusted by Bosch, Microsoft, GE Healthcare, and Honeywell. Conversational search and discovery — Zoe, Zoovu's AI shopping assistant, available across PDP, search, and PLP journeys. Data enrichment, analytics, and internal agents — a single data platform and analytics layer supporting both merchandiser and seller workflows. Built for B2C and B2B. Built AI-native, not bolt-on. And built to deliver measurable outcomes across the funnel including lift in conversion, AOV, and qualified pipeline. Why this matters now Enterprise ecommerce leaders have been told for years to assemble best-of-breed stacks — to bolt AI onto whatever search engine, recommendations tool, or personalization platform they already had. That model has reached its limit. The cost of integration, the inconsistency across touchpoints, and the inability to learn across channels has become too expensive to ignore. The next generation of ecommerce product discovery isn't a stack. It's an engine. One that learns from every shopper interaction across search, browse, recommendations, guided buying, configuration, and email — and applies that learning everywhere, instantly. One that works as well for a Valentino shopper exploring a new collection as it does for a Honeywell buyer specifying industrial equipment. What's next For our customers: nothing changes overnight, and everything gets better over time. Existing deployments continue to be supported and improved. Over the coming months, customers of both Zoovu and XGEN will gain access to combined capabilities such as Zoovu’s conversational AI capabilities or XGEN's recommendations engine, and much more to come. We’re going to keep doing what both companies have always done: shipping the best ecommerce product discovery that delivers measurable revenue lift for the world's most demanding brands. If you're an enterprise ecommerce or digital leader tired of paying the fragmentation tax, we'd love to show you what one engine can do. About Zoovu Zoovu is the AI-native product discovery platform that unifies search, recommendations, personalization, guided selling, configuration, and conversational AI on one ecommerce revenue engine — enabling enterprise B2C and B2B teams to deliver more relevant, high-performing customer journeys across digital channels. Zoovu supports leading global brands including Microsoft, Bosch, Canon, Honeywell, and Trek. About XGEN AI XGEN AI is the leading AI-native platform powering the next generation of ecommerce personalization and search. Trusted by leading brands such as Marc Jacobs, Valentino, and Sonos, XGEN AI delivers measurable lifts in conversion, revenue, and engagement. About FTV FTV Capital is a sector-focused growth equity investment firm that has raised more than $10.2 billion to invest in innovative, high-growth companies across financial technology and services, vertical software, enterprise technology and services, and healthcare technology and services. Founded in 1998, FTV has developed a highly differentiated and disciplined growth equity model, which leverages the firm’s deep domain expertise and thematic investing approach to help portfolio companies accelerate growth. FTV also provides companies with access to its Global Partner Network®, a strategic group of more than 600 executives from many of the world’s leading enterprises, and FTV Propel®, an in-house team of seasoned operational leaders who deliver counsel and resources across a range of critical business functions. FTV has invested in over 150 portfolio companies, including Agiloft, EBANX, Kore.ai, Lean Solutions Group, LoanPro, ReliaQuest and Vagaro, and successfully exited/partially exited Centaur (acquired by Waystone Group), Egress (acquired by KnowBe4), Enfusion (acquired by Clearwater Analytics), RapidRatings (recapitalized), VPay (acquired by Optum) and WorldFirst (acquired by Ant Financial). For more information, please visit www.ftvcapital.com and follow the firm on LinkedIn.
