Owner raises 240 million dollars in Series D funding

Owner, a platform providing operational and promotional tools for restaurants, announced on August 28 that it has raised 240 million dollars. The funding round was led by the Growth Equity division of Goldman Sachs Alternatives, with participation from Meritech, Redpoint, Headline, and Jack Altman. This Series D round values the company at 2.3 billion dollars. The platform is designed for small-scale establishments that lack dedicated technical or marketing staff, assisting them with online customer acquisition, order processing, and customer support. It integrates websites, online ordering, mobile applications, customer management, point-of-sale systems, and artificial intelligence-powered telephone order handling into a single framework. In its announcement, the company described how an artificial intelligence agent can create promotional plans, update websites, and generate advertising materials when a store owner requests to promote a specific menu item.

The system also manages telephone order reception, responses to reviews and emails, and general inquiries. Owner does not allow each store to customize the system freely; instead, it standardizes the screen layouts and operational flows that lead to orders. While stores can change their logos and colors, the company manages the placement of order buttons. This standardized structure enables the company to conduct comparative tests across multiple store websites and applications, using the results to improve performance. This approach reduces the burden on store owners to design individual settings, as Owner takes on the operation of digital services. The company reported that its annual recurring revenue has exceeded 100 million dollars and that thousands of local businesses use its platform. It also expects that sales through Owner for independent restaurants will exceed 1 billion dollars this year, a figure referring to store-side sales rather than the company's own revenue.

Following the expansion into independent restaurants in the United States, the company aims to enter overseas markets and other industries. Its presentation materials identified the United Kingdom, Canada, the European Union, and Australia as potential targets, along with plans to expand into hair salons, food stores, and spas. The company will decide which country or industry to enter first by analyzing demand gathered through its free website evaluation feature, AI Grader. BRIDGE reported the story.