Home

Focal Systems Wins “Fast Company’s World’s Most Innovative Companies for 2023”

via Business Wire

Focal Systems awarded retail AI leader joining the ranks of OpenAI, Disney, Tiffany & Co., and more

Focal Systems has been named to Fast Company’s prestigious annual list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies for 2023.

This year’s list highlights the businesses at the forefront of their respective industries, paving the way for the innovations of tomorrow. These companies are setting the standard with some of the greatest accomplishments of the modern world. In addition to the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies, 540 organizations are recognized across 54 sectors and regions.

“AI holds the promise of dramatically decreasing the cost of living for all mankind while enhancing the shopping experience., AI provides customers with fuller shelves of the products they actually want and retail workers with new superpowers to be able to find products in the entire store in an instant,” said Francois Chaubard, CEO of Focal Systems. “It’s an honor to be recognized by Fast Company for our invention of the 'Self-Driving Store' which enables exactly that. We take the power of self-driving cars and unleash it to automate and optimize stores.”

Focal’s “Self-Driving Store'' Operating System leverages shelf cameras and AI to digitize shelves and then automate all decision-making in the store: from merchandising, ordering, and pricing, to staffing, task and labor management, e-commerce platform management, and much more. With this optimization, the biggest retailers in the world are able to eliminate e-commerce substitutions completely, increase the availability of products, improve employee morale, and reduce food waste, leading to greater overall sales and profits.

In America alone, grocery stores throw away 40 million tons of food each year because of over-ordering. This leads to shrinkage, higher prices, food waste, and higher carbon emissions which exacerbates global warming. Focal’s AI is built to find and eliminate these inefficiencies and waste to lower costs, so retailers can lower prices, and, in turn, lower the cost of living for the world. In 2022, Focal helped grocery stores reduce shrinkage from 3.2% to 2.3% which is almost a third of the food waste. If this were in all grocery stores in America, the company would have helped eliminate 13.3 million tons of food waste.

Fast Company’s editors and writers sought out the companies making the biggest strides around the globe. The World’s Most Innovative Companies is Fast Company’s signature franchise and one of its most highly anticipated editorial efforts of the year. It provides a firsthand look at the inspiring and innovative efforts of companies across all sectors of the economy.

“What a strange and thrilling year it has been to honor this year’s Most Innovative Companies. This year’s list compiles some of the most cutting-edge groundbreakers who are changing our world every single day, from legacy organizations like McDonald’s to upstarts like MrBeast and institutions such as NASA. Everyone on this list does something completely, uniquely different, yet, they all have one thing in common: innovation,” said Fast Company editor-in-chief Brendan Vaughan.

Fast Company will host its third annual Most Innovative Companies Summit on April 19 and 20. The virtual summit celebrates the Most Innovative Companies in business and provides an inside look at cutting-edge business trends and what it takes to innovate in 2023. Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies issue (March/April 2023) is available online here, as well as in-app form via iTunes, and on newsstands beginning March 14. The hashtag is #FCMostInnovative.

About Focal Systems:

Founded in 2015 in San Francisco out of Stanford’s Computer Vision Lab, Focal Systems is the industry leader in retail automation. Our mission is to automate and optimize brick and mortar retail with state-of-the-art deep learning and AI. We have pioneered the world’s first “Self-Driving Store”- an OS that revolutionizes how stores are run. Focal has raised more than $40M to date and scaled solutions on three continents in hundreds of stores, with over 100,000 cameras deployed. Learn more at: https://focal.systems.

About Fast Company:

Fast Company is the only media brand fully dedicated to the vital intersection of business, innovation, and design, engaging the most influential leaders, companies, and thinkers on the future of business. Headquartered in New York City, Fast Company is published by Mansueto Ventures LLC, along with our sister publication Inc., and can be found online at www.fastcompany.com.

Contacts