Santé, a fintech and AI platform built for the wine and liquor industry, has raised $15 million in Series A funding to expand its technology and support more retailers.
The round was led by FINTOP, with participation from returning investors Bonfire Ventures, Operator Collective, Y Combinator and Veridical Ventures.
The latest funding comes just six months after Santé raised $7.6 million in seed funding. The company said its business has grown by 500% during this period and now serves nearly 1,000 retailers processing about $2 billion in annual gross merchandise value (GMV).
Santé provides an operating system designed specifically for wine and liquor stores. Its platform brings together in-store sales, e-commerce, delivery, marketing, subscriptions, inventory and other retail operations.
The company is using AI to automate many of the tasks store owners handle every day. Its AI agents can help with inventory, ordering, marketing, SEO and employee scheduling.
One of its tools, the AI Merchandising Agent, analyzes store-level sales data to recommend pricing and promotions for products that are slow to sell. Santé says about 25% of goods can take more than 12 months to turn a profit.
Its AI-powered invoice system can scan distributor invoices and automatically update inventory levels and unit costs, reducing the need for manual data entry.
“When we started Santé, our mission was to eliminate the operational headaches that plague independent wine and liquor retailers,” said Darren Fike, CEO of Santé. “Now that we’ve spent the last year showing that, we want to build a growth engine that proactively drives sales, re-engages lapsed customers, and actively boosts the bottom line of our customers.”
“It’s rare to find a founder and team at this stage that have both proven the solution is superior and are executing at an elite velocity in a massive, complex vertical,” said Brittani Roberts, the Director at FINTOP who leads the firm’s Vertical SaaS and Embedded Fintech thesis. “The team has built intuitive and practical AI back office workflows, with embedded fintech throughout the platform, so store owners aren’t simply getting another tool to track inventory. They’re getting an intelligent platform that directly expands their profit margins and operational scale.”
Santé also offers a Marketing Agent that analyzes customer purchase history and helps stores create targeted email and SMS campaigns. Its e-commerce tools can generate SEO-friendly product descriptions and images for large product catalogs.
The platform also connects delivery orders from services such as DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub and Instacart directly to the store’s point-of-sale system.
Santé has also built industry-specific tools for bottle and keg tracking, vintage management and mix-and-match case discounts.
The company plans to use the new funding to continue expanding its AI-powered platform as wine and liquor retailers face rising costs, labor shortages and complex regulations.
Founded to modernize liquor store operations, Santé aims to give independent retailers one platform to manage their businesses while using AI to improve efficiency and increase revenue.
