The Korea Herald

피터빈트

Fainders.AI partners with GS25 to launch an autonomous convenience store in Seoul, South Korea

By PRNEWSWIRE

Published : Nov. 24, 2023 - 00:10

    • Link copied

  • Fainders.AI has teamed up with GS25, the largest convenience store brand in Korea, to launch an autonomous store in Seoul, South Korea

SEOUL, South Korea, Nov. 23, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The new autonomous convenience store is powered by Fainders.AI's latest vision AI technology. The latest store, operated by the largest Korean convenience chain in GS retail, is the second store powered by Fainders.AI's technology, which opened in October 2023.

Autonomous convenience store is powered by Fainders.AI
Autonomous convenience store is powered by Fainders.AI

South Korea is home to a sizable 56,000 convenience stores, but it faces challenges such as a steep increase in the minimum wage and a staff shortage. As such, the minimum wage has markedly doubled over the last 10 years.

The latest GS25 store is powered by proprietary deep learning algorithms from Fainders.AI, utilizing only 2D cameras and reducing load cell-based inference.

The required computing resources and hardware costs have been dramatically reduced, making their solution the most competitively priced in the world.

Myungwon Ham, Founder and CEO at Fainders.AI, comments: "Our client has spoken to various solution vendors, and our solution was chosen because it is already the most competitively priced solution out there"

"With dynamic changes in Korea, especially in demographics, we believe the expansion of autonomous stores in Korea is approaching fast."

Fainders.AI's latest technology also adds additional "pain killing" value to retailers. 

"Existing autonomous stores can only stock as much as 50% of traditional shelves. This leads to sales losses for offline retail" Myungwon Ham said.

"In contrast, our weight sensor-mounted shelves boast the shelf capacity improved by 50% compared to other autonomous stores"

"This partnership with GS Retail confidently embodies our mission statement. We aim to restore the profitability of offline retail."

[About Fainders.AI]

Founded in 2020, Fainders.AI is a Korean retail AI startup developing autonomous store solutions. Their mission is to enhance store owners' profitability and elevate in-store customer experience. Their innovative solution goes beyond checkout-free payments, offering inventory management and in-store customer analytics. They provide offline retailers with this cutting-edge technology at a fraction of the cost that is one-third of their closest competitor's.