A Stockholm startup betting that fashion shoppers are tired of returning ill-fitting clothes has landed what its advisers are calling the largest seed round in European fashion technology.
eComID said Monday it raised $17 million in a seed round led by Systemiq Capital, with participation from Regeneration.VC, Course Corrected and Stadium, the Swedish sports retailer that doubles as a customer. Returning investor CapitalT and strategic investor H&M Group also joined, according to the company.
Mannheimer Swartling, the law firm that advised on the deal, pegged it as the largest seed ever raised in European fashion tech and the second largest globally in the category, though the claim has not been independently verified beyond the firm's August statement. That assertion reflects a broader truth: investors are warming to infrastructure plays that might finally solve online retail's return problem.
The company builds what it calls a Shopping Passport, a cross-brand identity layer that tracks shopper preferences and body data across participating retailers. Founded in 2023, eComID has signed 60 brands and now reaches 20 million monthly shoppers, it said.
The pitch rests on a straightforward value proposition. Shoppers using the passport return 30% fewer items, according to the company, while partner brands see a 10% lift in conversion. Named customers include COS, J.Lindeberg, Axel Arigato, Peak Performance, Haglöfs and Stadium.
Oscar Rundqvist, co-founder and chief executive, spent years leading global customer experience work at H&M Group before launching eComID with five co-founders: Otto Nordgren (CTO), Alexander Real, Alexander Gårdenberg, Jaime Ferrando and Patrick Rengifo. The company employs 17 people.
Building a layer that remembers
The core product lets shoppers create a profile once and carry it across all connected brands. An AI agent called Vera sits on retailers' sites and uses that cross-brand context to recommend sizes, answer product questions and surface personalized items, the company said. Additional modules include behavioral nudges and personalized return policies aimed at cutting waste.
It's an approach that inverts the usual e-commerce personalization model. Most vendors work within each retailer's siloed data. eComID's cross-brand passport, by contrast, aims to increase value as more brands join the network, creating what amounts to a shared intelligence layer.
The company holds ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification and SOC 2 Type 2 attestation, and it operates under GDPR standards, according to its website.
"AI without context still starts from zero," Rundqvist said. "The best shopping experience should feel like walking into a store that already knows how to help. We're building the missing layer between shoppers, brands and AI to make that possible."
Gemma Bloemen, who leads Applied AI investing at Systemiq Capital, framed it as a structural problem. "AI cannot personalize without context," she said. "This phenomenal team deeply understands the needs of the brands and has built a product that aligns a better shopper experience with stronger economics and fewer unnecessary returns."
Early capital and heavyweight angels
eComID raised a €2.75 million pre-seed round in early 2024 led by CapitalT, with H&M Group Ventures participating. H&M Group first backed the company in mid-2023 through an incubation investment, giving Rundqvist and his co-founders a validation stamp from the industry's establishment.
The seed round's angel roster reads like a who's who of European consumer tech. It includes Alan Mamedi, co-founder of Truecaller; Sebastian Knutsson, co-founder of King; Henrik Nordvall, former CEO of Matalan and managing director of H&M UK & Ireland; and Maria Raga, former CEO of Depop. Helena Helmersson, former CEO of H&M Group, joined as an investor and advisor earlier this year.
Rundqvist declined to disclose the company's valuation.
The regulatory tailwind
eComID's expansion comes as regulators tighten rules around fashion waste. The EU's ban on destroying unsold clothing and footwear entered into application on July 19, 2026, affecting large enterprises first. Meanwhile, U.S. consumers were expected to return $849.9 billion in merchandise in 2025, or 15.8% of sales, according to a National Retail Federation estimate published in 2025.
Those figures help explain why brands might be willing to share customer data across a common platform, something that would have seemed unlikely a few years ago. Returns eat into margins. They also create environmental costs that younger shoppers increasingly care about.
The company will use the fresh capital for international expansion, team growth and further development of the Shopping Passport, it said. eComID was named among finalists in eBay's Circular Fashion Fund in recent months and received a $50,000 grant. The startup said it plans to scale the passport beyond the Nordics into broader European and North American markets.
Competitors in the personalization space include True Fit, Bloomreach, Nosto and Shopify's AI storefront tools, though those vendors typically work within individual retailers' data ecosystems rather than attempting to build a cross-brand network.
Whether eComID can convince enough brands to participate in a shared identity layer remains the open question. Network effects work only if the network reaches critical mass. But with backing from H&M Group, a roster of Scandinavian brands already onboard, and seventeen million dollars in the bank, the company has bought itself time to find out.
