Dispute-tracking software startup Glimpse said today it has closed on an early-stage $35 million round of funding to accelerate its plan to use artificial intelligence to help brands gain more leverage over retailers.

The Series A round was led by the high-profile venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and saw participation from 8VC and Y Combinator, bringing the startup’s total amount raised so far to $52 million.

Glimpse, officially known as Dime Campus Inc., is targeting the little known problem of “retail deductions,” which refers to the amount of money that retailers subtract from what they owe brands when settling their invoices. They make these deductions so they don’t have to bear the cost of damaged goods, but not all of their claims are valid, and it can cost brands millions of dollars.

In an interview with TechCrunch, Glimpse co-founder and Chief Executive Akash Raju (pictured, center, alongside co-founders Anuj Mehta and Kushal Negi) explained that it’s a serious problem for brands. “These errors are surprisingly common,” he said, explaining that companies may face deductions for short shipments, even if it meets its obligations.

The problem stems from the cumbersome process the industry uses to resolve these deductions. It involves human teams logging into multiple retailer systems, sifting through scattered documents to try to reconcile any discrepancies there might be against internal records. Raju says this process is extremely inefficient and full of mistakes, leading to “consistent revenue leakage” from invalid deductions.

Glimpse’s solution is an agentic AI system that automatically reviews deductions, performing all of the cross-referencing with internal documents so it can flag invalid deductions and file a dispute. Its agents go as far as logging into retailers’ portals, aggregating the necessary data to support its dispute claims. “The AI agents validate each change against internal data such as supply chain records and promotion calendars to determine which deductions are legitimate,” Raju said.

The startup says its disputes are backed with real evidence, enabling it to give brands real operating leverage and improve their profit-and-loss statements by as much as 10%. In the case of one consumer packaged goods company that does more than a billion dollars in annual revenue, Glimpse’s agents reviewed 17,000 deductions in less than 24 hours, identifying “millions of dollars” in recoverable revenue. That illustrates the scale of the problem it’s tackling. A single human would likely take two years to get through that amount of work manually, Raju said.

That said, Glimpse doesn’t rely only on AI agents. Raju stressed that human oversight is still essential, especially when it comes to following up on disputes and quality assurance.

Glimpse believes its platform will soon become essential for every brand that sells goods through retailers, because those companies are already using AI software to accelerate other aspects of their workflows. Retailers are also using technology to streamline their operations, and so the retail deductions process has become a real bottleneck. By addressing this problem, Glimpse helps both sides move faster. As an added benefit, it also enhances brand’s cash flow management, allowing them to realize revenue faster.

Andreessen Horowitz Partner Joe Schmidt said back-office retail operations have been stuck using spreadsheets for decades, so an accelerator is massively overdue. “What stood out to us were the customer references,” he said. “Glimpse is delivering clear, measurable ROI.”

Photo: Glimpse