Tightly Launches with $17M Seed Financing to End Retail's $1.8 Trillion Inventory Distortion Problem

New York – 10/11/2025 – Tightly officially launched out of stealth today, unveiling Cortex: an autonomous intelligence layer designed to help modern retailers and high-growth brands scale faster by safely automating the complex cycle of forecasting, replenishment, and supplier communication.

Already trusted by over 100 scaling brands, Tightly addresses the "Inventory Distortion" problem that costs the retail industry an estimated $1.8 Trillion annually. For Heads of Ecommerce and Operations, this isn't just a statistic, it is missed revenue due to stockouts and growth stalled by chaotic, manual operations.

Existing tools fail these teams because they cannot handle the reality of modern retail. They lack connectivity to the broader tech stack and break down when faced with complex inventory needs like bundles or raw components. As a result, inventory planners are trapped in spreadsheet hell, manually chasing suppliers via email instead of focusing on growth strategy.

"We saw that scaling brands are trying to manage volatile, omnichannel demand with rigid tools from a slower era. They are missing huge growth opportunities simply because their operational backend can't keep up with their front-end demand,"

Byron Berrisford, co-founder and CEO of Tightly

"We are starting by fixing this broken heart of retail… inventory. But our long-term vision is for Tightly Cortex to become the world's first true Retail Operating System, eventually connecting inventory data directly to growth levers like dynamic pricing and ad spend."

Tightly Cortex acts as an automated "nervous system" for retailers. It is built for hyper-connectivity, launching with over 300 pre-built integrations across ERPs (NetSuite, MS Dynamics), ecommerce (Shopify, Salesforce Commerce Cloud), and marketing channels (Google Ads, Meta) to create a single source of truth.

Key innovations powering Cortex include:

• Grandmaster-Grade AI: Tightly's forecasting engine, designed by a Kaggle Grandmaster, automatically selects the best of four proprietary ML models for each SKU. This ensures extreme accuracy by natively accounting for seasonality, marketing events, and sales spikes.

• Deep Inventory Intelligence: Unlike standard tools that only track finished goods, Tightly handles real-world retail complexity, including Bill of Materials (BOM) for manufacturing, component-level planning, and dynamic product bundles.

• Automated Supplier Comms: Frees Ops teams from endless email chains by automating chaotic communication via Email, EDI, and APIs, ensuring that what is planned actually arrives.

Funding & Traction

The company also announced today that it has raised $17 million in seed financing led by private investment firm Deepfin, with participation from several industry leaders.

"We backed Tightly because we saw that high growth brands are desperate for a solution that actually helps them scale operations, not just report on them, The fact that they already have over 100 customers relying on their platform proves this team has the unique technical pedigree to build the autonomous infrastructure modern retail demands."

Robert Buxton, COO at Deepfin.

About Tightly

Tightly is building the world's first Retail Operating System, starting with an autonomous Supply Chain Cortex that helps retailers forecast demand and automate replenishment. Our platform helps high-growth brands unlock revenue and scale faster by enabling teams to unite planning and execution.