Verneek, the deep-tech enterprise AI company, plans to expand its European business by establishing an office in Luxembourg.
This would be the New York-based company’s first office in Europe. The maneuver is subject to final agreements, so details on the timing of the opening and staffing were not available at this time.
“Retail and wholesale together are Europe’s largest private-sector employer. Companies across the sector face mounting operational headwinds — the kinds of challenges our AI-native operating platform is designed to address,” Dr. Nasrin Mostafazadeh, cofounder and chief executive officer of Verneek, said in a statement. “We are excited to support our European retail partners more closely as we work to establish our first European office.”
Mostafazadeh said the expansion would give Verneek “a strong foundation for global growth and advances our mission to help Europe’s consumer enterprises grow their top line, optimize their bottom line and delight shoppers, as we have done for years in the U.S.” She founded Verneek five years ago with her husband, Dr. Omid Bakhshandeh.
They indicated they selected Luxembourg because of its central location in Europe, multilingual business and technology community, connectivity to major markets, and active role in shaping and implementing European Union-wide policies and solutions.
Luc Decker, consul general of Luxembourg in New York, said in his statement: “Verneek’s intention to establish its first European office in Luxembourg represents an opportunity to build local expertise and help European businesses put artificial intelligence to practical use. We look forward to supporting Verneek’s founders as they work to establish the company’s presence in Europe.”
Verneek is AI-native and domain specific, meaning it’s not a firm migrating to AI, and not a large language model. It’s focused on retail and transforming enterprise data into vertically integrated custom solutions for front- and back-office operations. It breaks down, as Mostafazadeh said an interview with WWD earlier this year, “the silos that retailers have been living with.” She and her husband both have Ph.D.s in “dialogue agents,” which is AI software that simulates human conversation through text or voice.
Verneek’s technology aims to boost efficiencies, reduce manual labor, enhance the consumer experience and raise profitability. Officials said Nordstrom is an “anchor partner” and that Verneek has several other clients it will disclose in the future.
Geoffroy van Raemdonck, CEO of the Exemplar Luxury Group which operates Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman, is among Verneek’s minority shareholders; Mostafazadeh and her husband are the majority owners.
Verneek indicated that its technology supports tens of millions of consumers and several hundred thousand employees, helping consumer enterprises increase productivity, accelerate decision-making and create deeply personalized customer experiences. Verneek helps consumer enterprises deploy AI-native solutions across business functions — from supply chain, merchandise planning, marketing, store operations and customer care to e-commerce use cases like search and discovery.
Source: wwd.com
