2026 RTIH Innovation Awards Startup of the Year finalists include Augmodo and Theseus Robotics. Retailtechinnovationhub is pleased to announce the shortlist for the 2026 RTIH Innovation Awards Startup of the Year category. Retailtechinnovationhub received a record number of entries this year and many fantastic examples of technology excellence driving transformative change across the global retail sector. Congratulations to all those who made it through the initial submission process! It's now over to its star studded judging panel who will decide the winners to be announced at the 2026 RTIH Innovation Awards Ceremony, taking place at The HAC in Central London. The event will be held on Wednesday, 4th November and consist of a drinks reception, three course meal, awards ceremony presided over by award winning stand-up comedian, presenter, actor and broadcaster, Aurie Styla, and after party until 1am. Its 2026 Startup of the Year finalists as follows: Augmodo builds physical AI infrastructure powered by wearable computer vision for frontline retail teams. A frontline worker wears a passive Smartbadge during standard shifts, automatically building a live 3D map of shelf inventory to spot out-of-stocks, gaps, and misplaced items in real-time with zero manual scanning or operational change. Founded in 2023 by Ross Finman, who sold his last start up to Niantic and led the mapping team behind Pokémon GO, Augmodo expanded from 8 to 165 stores in under a year, raising nearly $60 million at a $350 million valuation. Chemist Warehouse achieved 30%+ shelf gap reductions. Clavis Studio AI visual commerce tool that uses furniture retailers' product catalog to design their shoppers' rooms such that shoppers can 'shop the look' according to their design preference and budget. Clavis AI provides a whitelabelled, fully embedded AI design tool for furniture retailers to offer personalised interior design to their shoppers online and instore. Fully immersive with deep data analytics providing unrivalled insight into consumer behaviour. Lyzer is a Lisbon-based logistics-as-a-service (LaaS) startup, launched in September 2024 by the founders of 360hyper and SPEAK. Its platform brings orders from stores, online shops and marketplaces into one system and runs smart task allocation, guided picking and route optimisation, so retailers can turn existing stores into fulfilment hubs. In two years, Lyzer has processed over 1.1 million orders worth more than €330 million in GMV, enabled Staples Portugal to offer same-day delivery within four hours, opened a Spanish subsidiary and raised over €10 million from Indico Capital Partners, Lince Capital, LC Ventures and C2 Capital. Minimist is the recommerce operating system for charity retail. Every donated item is a one-off with no barcode, no SKU and no product data, so listing one by hand takes up to 10 minutes and 97% of donated stock never goes online at all. Minimist turns one photo into a priced, described, live listing across eight marketplaces in 30 seconds. In its first year in market Retailtechinnovationhub has signed 28 charity retailers across the UK, Ireland and Australia, including Salvation Army, Vision Ireland and Helen and Douglas House. Together they have listed 73,844 donated items and sold 31,580 of them, raising 1,409,994 euros for their causes. M11 Labs is an agentic commerce lab helping good products win in a zero-trust internet. The M11 platform puts specialised AI agents to work on a brand's online store across four areas: fact checking every claim against independent evidence, correcting what AI assistants say, completing the product data machines need, and tracking competitor threats. Everything rolls into one Commercial Score and a prioritised fix list, which M11 agents draft and the brand approves. Within months of launch M11 agents have scanned 1,500+ brands, stress tested 6,500+ claims, published a state of the category scan of the skincare industry, and launched OpenMarket, the first multi-agent marketplace. Neato is a second party (2P) e-commerce model that gives consumer brands one accountable partner to grow across fragmented online channels. Neato purchases inventory directly, becomes the seller of record, and manages marketplace execution across pricing, listings, creative, advertising, logistics, reporting, and brand protection. Over the past year, the company extended this model beyond Amazon into TikTok Shop, direct-to-consumer, social commerce, and Walmart, supported by a new Las Vegas operations hub, and AI enabled workflows. By bringing people, inventory, technology, and execution together, Neato aims to make marketplace growth more coordinated, measurable, and profitable for brands and shoppers. SquareBySquare SquareBySquare turns an online purchase into real, mapped rainforest protection. Customers choose a square metre of rainforest, name it, receive a personalised certificate and see it on a live public map. StudioGo is a workflow platform designed to eliminate content bottlenecks and provide complete visibility across the product imagery lifecycle. By connecting planning, production, approval, asset management, and publication into a single workflow, StudioGO helps retail, e-commerce, creative, marketing, and studio teams move products from sample arrival to customer facing channels faster and with greater consistency. TerzyApp turns two ordinary phone photos into 32 body measurements, letting people order made-to-measure clothing online and matching them with verified independent tailors. Payments and payouts run across 37 countries and the tailor is paid only after successful delivery. It combines live AI body measurement, a verified tailor marketplace and cross-border money rails in one shipped product - made-to-measure clothing from your phone. TerzyApp UK is pre-revenue, with a working iOS app in TestFlight beta and an AI measurement engine running in production on cloud GPU, ahead of a UK launch. Theseus Robotics Theseus Robotics (Zürich; Y Combinator backed) has buillt Domi, a wheeled, two-armed robot that restocks supermarket shelves overnight. Domi tows a trolley of stock to the aisle and places products on the shelf. An AI model trained on Theseus's own demonstrations moves the arms; when Domi meets something new, an operator can step in remotely and the correction becomes training data. No store retrofit, no capex: a monthly fee per robot. Founded by a team from ETH Zürich, Carnegie Mellon and Flink Robotics, Theseus had Domi restocking autonomously within five weeks of the robot's delivery and is preparing retailer pilots for 2027.

Augmodo has unveiled two new versions of its Smartbadge™ wearable device for frontline workers: the Owl Mini and Owl Pro. The devices represent the sixth hardware generation developed in 24 months. The Owl Mini weighs 120 grams and features a triple-camera spatial vision system, full-shift battery life, and panic button. It will roll out to customers in Q1 2027. The Owl Pro includes an e-ink display, built-in walkie-talkie communication, and extended battery life. It launches in Q2 2027. Both devices were developed based on hundreds of hours of feedback from workers. Ross Finman, CEO of Augmodo, said the Owl Mini is the size of an AirPod case whilst offering triple the cameras and battery life compared to earlier versions that lasted barely three hours.

Augmodo unveils wearable Owl Mini and Owl Pro: shrinking Physical AI into smallest, smartest Smartbadge(TM) ever built. Provided by Business Wire Sep 16, 2026, 6:04:00 AM Six hardware generations developed in 24 months, shaped by workers who wear it. Augmodo is making jobs easier with smarter, lighter Smartbadge(TM): Physical AI moving at software speed Augmodo, which builds physical AI assistants for the physical workforce, today unveiled the Owl Mini and Owl Pro: the sixth generation of its Smartbadge(TM) in just two years, and the smallest, most capable spatial hardware the company has built to date, which will roll out to customers in early 2027. Both devices trace back to one source: hundreds of hours of associate feedback on what to cut, keep, and build next. Augmodo started with a bulky, Wi-Fi-only camera that lasted barely three hours. Six generations later, the Owl Mini is the size of an AirPod case, with triple the cameras and triple the battery life. Iterating hardware alongside the people wearing it every day allows faster innovation, seamless scaling, and makes a real-world impact for frontline workers. The feedback was split in two directions - some associates wanted the badge to be as light and small as possible, while others wanted it to do more: feature display, communication and security all in one device. Augmodo built both to further its mission to enhance the physical workforce through intelligent automation and spatial AI. The Owl Mini is the lightest device Augmodo has ever built. At 120 grams, barely bigger than a wireless earbud case, it packs a patent pending triple-camera spatial vision system, full-shift battery life, and panic button. Owl Mini begins rolling out to customers in Q1 2027. The Owl Pro is built for facility-wide operations. An always-readable e-ink display, built-in walkie-talkie communication, and beyond a full day of battery life turn the badge into a single operational hub, covering inventory visibility, AI assistance, communication, and security in one wearable. Owl Pro follows in Q2 2027. "We started with a bulky, Wi-Fi-only camera that lasted barely three hours. Six generations later, the Owl Mini is the size of an AirPod case, with triple the cameras and triple the battery life," said Ross Finman, CEO of Augmodo. "Iterating hardware alongside the people wearing it every day allows us to innovate faster, scale seamlessly, and make a real-world impact for frontline workers." The Owl Mini: Uncompromised Power in a Tiny Footprint The Owl Mini proves enterprise-grade Physical AI doesn't require heavy equipment. Built for seamless daily wear, key capabilities include: * Triple-Camera Spatial Vision System: Dual 4K fisheye cameras paired with a wake sensor to gate capturing only shelves. * Full-Shift Endurance: 8-10+ hours of continuous use, three times longer than Augmodo's earliest pilots. * On-Device Awareness & Connectivity: Built-in buzzer and push-to-talk mic, powered by Wi-Fi 6 and on-device NPU processing. The mic is active only while the associate is holding the button - no ambient audio is captured, stored, or transmitted. The Owl Pro: All-in-One Smartbadge(TM) Designed for comprehensive operational workflows, the Owl Pro transforms the traditional badge into an interactive, intelligent command center: * Dynamic E-Ink Display: Functions as a readable ID badge with status updates visible in any lighting. * 15-Hour Battery Life: A full shift with power to spare by the time it ends. * Facility-Wide Walkie-Talkie: Secure, associate-controlled push-to-talk communication across the entire floor. Both the Owl Mini and Owl Pro include an optional, associate-activated panic button for on-the-spot security alerts, with opt-in front-facing safety camera and time-bound audio recording functionality to support incident response. They will roll out first to Augmodo's existing retail and brand partners beginning in Q1 2027, with broader availability to follow. Owl Evolution at a Glance (2024 - 2027) Since its earliest pilots, Augmodo's worker-led design cycle has cut hardware weight by two-thirds and tripled camera power, while pushing battery life 3x on Owl Mini and 5x on Owl Pro. * Version 3 & 4 (2024 /2025): Bulky single-lens proof of concept (350g+, 2-3 hr battery). * Big Owl / ND001 (2025): First dual-camera form factor introducing onboard NPU ML processing (220g, 4-5 hr battery). * Owl 1 (2026): Transition to custom 4K optics, IMU spatial tracking, and full-shift power (160g, 8-10 hr battery). * Owl Mini (2027): 40% smaller, 25% lighter than Owl 1 (120g) * Owl Pro (2027): All-in-one operational hub featuring e-ink display, walkie-talkie, and up to 15 hours of battery utilization with weight of a smartphone. Every generation of the Smartbadge has gone through the same test: real associates, real shifts, real feedback. Battery anxiety on early pilots is why full-shift endurance climbed as high as 5x on Owl Pro. The need to carry fewer devices is why Owl Pro folds communication and security into the same badge as spatial tracking. Hardware that gets smaller, smarter, and easier to wear with every version is what happens when the people wearing the device are part of building it. Behind both devices is SpatialView(TM), Augmodo's analytics platform, which turns what the Smartbadge sees into real time visibility into store conditions. Instead of staff traveling to store locations to check on things in person, or business leaders working off data that's a week or a month old, SpatialView lets them see what the state of the shelf is inside any store in real time, from a laptop. By delivering non-intrusive, privacy-first wearables paired with that visibility, Augmodo empowers physical workers with spatial intelligence that drives efficiency, precision, and trust, built to disappear into the shift, not add to it. About Augmodo Augmodo builds Physical AI assistants for the physical workforce. A passive Smartbadge turns ordinary movement into a live 3D map of what's happening on the floor, giving a new hire the situational awareness of a two-year veteran. It sees the work, not the worker. Augmodo already maps hundreds of millions of square feet every month, deployed across retail, brands, logistics, and field operations, with adoption growing among some of the largest retailers and CPGs in the world. Learn more at augmodo.com. The articles, information, and content displayed on this webpage may include materials prepared and provided by third parties. Such third-party content is offered for informational purposes only and is not endorsed, reviewed, or verified by Morningstar. Morningstar makes no representations or warranties regarding the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, or reliability of any third-party content displayed on this site. The views and opinions expressed in third-party content are those of the respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Morningstar, its affiliates, or employees. Morningstar is not responsible for any errors, omissions, or delays in this content, nor for any actions taken in reliance thereon. Users are advised to exercise their own judgment and seek independent financial advice before making any decisions based on such content. The third-party providers of this content are not affiliated with Morningstar, and their inclusion on this site does not imply any form of partnership, agency, or endorsement.