Thri5 raises $5.4M seed to scale AI execution layer for retail

Thri5 Raises $5.4M Seed Round

Thri5, a Toronto-based company building an AI execution layer for retail, has raised $5.4 million in seed funding. The round was announced on September 21, 2026.

What Thri5 Does

Thri5 builds an AI-powered operating system designed to bridge the gap between a retailer's central strategy and ground-level execution. The platform monitors sales, margin and inventory data, uses agentic AI to surface exceptions and opportunities, and routes prioritized actions across store, distribution-centre and head-office teams.

In short, Thri5 positions itself as an execution layer: the connective tissue between what a retailer decides at headquarters and what actually happens on the shop floor and across the supply chain.

Founders

Thri5 was founded in 2024 in Toronto by Jeremy Pee and Herman Paek.

• Jeremy Pee previously served as Chief Digital and Technology Officer at Marks & Spencer.
• Herman Paek previously served as CEO of Kijiji Canada.

The founding team combines large-scale retail digital transformation experience with marketplace and platform operating experience.

Traction

The company completed a nine-week pilot with Wild Fork Foods that delivered a 3% sales increase, followed by a US-wide rollout. That pilot-to-rollout progression is notable at seed stage, where proof of measurable commercial impact is often the gating factor for larger deployments.

Investors

The seed round included participation from:

• Mistral Venture Partners
• MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund
• Whitecap Venture Partners
• N49P
• Amar Varma
• Farhan Thawar

No lead investor was disclosed.

Why This Matters for the Retail Tech Landscape

Retailers have spent the past decade layering analytics dashboards, demand-planning tools and task-management systems on top of their operations. The persistent gap has not been visibility — it has been execution. Data surfaces a problem, but the action still has to travel through district managers, store managers and department leads before anything changes.

Thri5's approach targets that last mile directly. By combining monitoring of sales, margin and inventory data with agentic AI that surfaces exceptions and opportunities, the platform aims to compress the time between insight and action. Routing prioritized actions across store, distribution-centre and head-office teams makes the product an operational workflow tool rather than a reporting layer.

That positioning puts Thri5 in the same conversation as retail execution and task-management platforms, but with an AI-native architecture and an agentic decisioning component. The Wild Fork Foods result — a 3% sales increase in a nine-week pilot — gives the company a concrete metric to bring into conversations with prospective retail customers.

What the Funding Supports

At $5.4 million, this is a substantial seed round by Canadian standards, and it arrives with a mix of institutional venture funds, an accelerator fund and angel participation. For a company founded in 2024, the round provides runway to expand deployments beyond the initial Wild Fork Foods rollout and to build out the platform's agentic capabilities.

Acquisition Angle

For acquirers in retail software, supply chain technology or enterprise AI, Thri5 represents an early-stage asset with three attributes worth tracking:

• A differentiated layer. Execution orchestration between central strategy and store-level operations is a space where incumbents are often strong on data but weak on action routing.
• Founder pedigree. Leadership experience at Marks & Spencer and Kijiji Canada signals both enterprise retail credibility and platform-scaling familiarity.
• Early commercial proof. A pilot that converted into a US-wide rollout is a meaningful signal at seed stage.

The company operates in a category where strategic buyers — retail tech suites, ERP vendors, supply chain platforms — have historically acquired to fill execution and workflow gaps. Thri5's seed round gives it the capital to deepen that position before any such conversation becomes relevant.

Summary

• Company: Thri5
• Headquarters: Toronto, Canada
• Founded: 2024
• Founders: Jeremy Pee, Herman Paek
• Round: Seed
• Amount: $5.4 million USD
• Announced: September 21, 2026
• Investors: Mistral Venture Partners, MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund, Whitecap Venture Partners, N49P, Amar Varma, Farhan Thawar
• Notable traction: Nine-week pilot with Wild Fork Foods producing a 3% sales increase, followed by a US-wide rollout