District Raises $14.7M in Seed Funding to Unlock the Next Generation of Online Commerce

District, an AI commerce platform, announced $14.7M in seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz and Kindred Ventures, with participation from Greylock Partners, Jaren Glover, former Depop CEO Maria Raga, Gokul Rajaram, Soleio, Deborah Liu, Imran Khan, Jacob Andreou, Peter Sellis, Josh Siegel, SV Angel, 20VC, and others.

Founded by Snap alumni Eddie Koai, Patrick Mandia, and Khoi Tran, District is an AI-powered commerce platform designed to help anyone build and grow a world-class commerce business. Creators, entrepreneurs, and brands use District to launch custom, interactive experiences for their customers, inspired by how they sell on social, and without writing code or hiring engineers. After quietly building for the past three years and onboarding more than 1,000 businesses, District is now launching in General Availability. Starting today, anyone can build, own, and scale their business on District.

“Whenever a group of people forms around a shared interest, commerce naturally follows,” said Eddie Koai, CEO and co-founder of District. “We saw it everywhere, in fandoms, resale communities, and employee groups. People were already buying and selling with each other, but they were doing it with makeshift tools. District exists to turn those informal, high-trust marketplaces into real, scalable businesses. We’re building infrastructure so anyone with a product, audience, or idea can create their own commerce platform.”

Also Read: Gladly Announces Agentic Commerce Capabilities at Gladly Connect Live

The shift in commerce

While buying has shifted from static websites to live, social, and community-driven formats found on large marketplaces, commerce tools for independent businesses have not kept pace with the way people buy and sell today. Most platforms still force brands into rigid formats that control the customer relationship, data, and experience. As a result, creators, entrepreneurs, and brands are often forced to sacrifice ownership, economics, customization, and the ability to experiment with new selling methods.

At the same time, AI has dramatically lowered the complexity and cost of entry when it comes to building a platform. What once required engineers and months of coding can now be built in hours with AI.

“As the cost of software development approaches zero, the winners will be platforms that combine speed, adaptability, and real infrastructure,” said Bryan Kim, Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “District enables businesses to run complex commerce operations without the traditional overhead, handling infrastructure and operational layers behind the scenes so brands can easily invest in new and changing selling formats. District is well positioned to power a meaningful share of new commerce businesses created in the years ahead.”

How District works

By removing the technical barriers, brands can finally build the way they want to sell on the internet, making it possible for anyone to turn their ideas into thriving businesses with the ability to host live streams, manage auctions, gate subscriptions, and more. On District, key capabilities include:

• AI Builder: Generates fully customized storefronts, community features, and selling formats like live shopping from a simple prompt. Users describe their vision, products, audience, and how they want to sell and the AI Builder brings it to life.
• Commerce Manager: Serves as the operational command center, giving businesses everything they need to run day-to-day operations. This includes listings, inventory, subscriptions, payments, order fulfillment, and moderation, all in one dashboard.
• Backend Services: Provides enterprise-grade support typically unavailable to small and mid-sized businesses, including fraud prevention, human customer support, dispute resolution, and seller and buyer protection.

SOURCE: BusinessWire