♦ The start-up reached a portfolio of approximately 300 customers and reached the break-even point in 2025 ♦ The target for 2026 is to double the business, to 1.5 million euros in recurring revenue and 600 customers ♦ The new AI-based functionality will optimize prices in real time, offering dynamic discounts to each user, depending on the behavior and the trader's margin ♦ The growth strategy aims expansion on the DACH market (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) and strengthening the presence in the Shopify ecosystem.
The Timișoara start-up Aqurate, which develops a platform based on artificial intelligence (AI) for personalizing the customer experience in online stores, is in advanced discussions to raise a new round of financing, worth approximately 800,000 euros. The capital infusion will be primarily directed to the development of a new technological module that will generate personalized discounts for customers, but also to accelerate the expansion on the DACH market (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). The company, which reached the break-even point in 2025 and currently has a portfolio of almost 300 clients, aims for annual recurring revenues (ARR) of 1.5 million euros by the end of 2026, which would represent a doubling of the results compared to the previous year. «We are very close to closing a financing round. We have commitments, we have also received contracts from interested investors and then we want to close the last tickets. We want to raise between 700,000 and 800,000 euros. (…) We are at a very good point and we are very anxious to be able to receive the resources, because we would have liked if it could be faster and then we would have accelerated this whole part of the construction of the module discounts, but also the internationalization part», declared Vlad Marincaş, co-founder and CEO of Aqurate, during the ZF IT Generation show. The Aqurate platform was launched in 2022, the funding received by the start-up to date amounting to around 450,000 euros.
What Aqurate does: «Show the right product to the right person»
Aqurate helps online stores increase their sales through product recommendations generated by AI, based on the analysis of user behavioral data (clicks, products viewed, additions to cart). The algorithm learns the preferences of each visitor and displays the relevant products in various points of the site (homepage, product page, checkout) or through external channels (e-mail, SMS), increasing the conversion rate and the average value of the shopping basket. «Practically, what do we do in short at Aqurate? We make product recommendations in a more «smart» way. This means that we have a technology through which we can capture the behavioral data of users on e-commerce sites. (…) Our mantra is «showing the right item to the right person at the right time»», explained Vlad Marincaş. The technological stake for the current year, supported by the new funding, is the launch of a «dynamic discounts» algorithm. It will analyze in real-time the likelihood that a customer will complete a purchase and automatically offer the optimal discount needed to close the sale, while protecting the merchant's profit margin. «We want to do this and «at the right price». And how exactly does this happen? Through dynamic discounts based on the user's behavior. This means that if the user keeps thinking about that sofa, he looks, «should I buy it, should I not buy» and then, if we can offer an automatic discount based on the behavior, we say, «OK, let's do 7% and let's seal the deal». (…) Many do discounts, but I do them manually. If we do this work algorithmically, we can be much more efficient», detailed the co-founder of Aqurate.
Duplication of business and focus on Germany
For 2026, Aqurate's plan is to reach an annual recurring revenue (ARR) of 1.5 million euros, double what it was by the end of 2025, and increase the number of customers to 600. The growth strategy is based on strengthening the position in the Shopify ecosystem (where Aqurate received the global «Built for Shopify» certification) and expanding into the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), a market ten times larger than the local one. «We set out to reach 1.5 million ARR by the end of the year, to have a good «foothold» in Germany as well, to continue the expansion in Greece and to consolidate the market in Romania. (…) Starting from the premise that we will have approximately the same average income per client, this means doubling the number of clients and reaching somewhere around 600 clients», specified Vlad Marincaş. The start-up raised a first round of funding of around 420,000 euros in 2023, and previously, when the project started, it benefited from funding through the Startup Diaspora program. In 2025, Aqurate managed to reach the operational profitability threshold (break-even), forced by the more difficult context in the investment market, which delayed the closing of the new round, because initially, the team had proposed to attract a financing round of around 2 million euros as early as 2024.