Would you shop based on AI-generated images?
Startup Dalet Labs bets you will.
The AI commerce company told CMO Insider exclusively that it raised $7 million in pre-seed funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and is launching its first product, a shopping app called Scene.
Dalet Labs, founded in 2025 by Omer Bar-Tal after leaving artificial intelligence video startup Runway, recently emerged from stealth mode. The startup raised pre-seed funding in late 2025 before finalizing its product roadmap. In addition to Lightspeed, venture capital firm SV Angel and individual angel investors also participated in this round of financing.
Lisa Han, a partner at Lightspeed who led the round, said Bar-Tal has “expertise in video artificial intelligence research” and “a deep understanding of consumer needs.”
Scene, which launched on the U.S. Apple App Store on Wednesday, lets people scroll through shoppable AI-generated images. The app is invite-only at launch and is not yet available on Android. While images of people or scenes are generated by artificial intelligence, the products themselves are sourced from real brands in categories such as fashion, home décor and sports.
Scenes are the source of AI-generated images that link directly to actual products. Dalet Labs
Bar-Tal envisions Scene as a tool people can turn to when they want to buy something but aren’t sure exactly what they want. It’s similar to browsing Pinterest or TikTok in hopes of being inspired to buy something, but Bar-Tal says there’s a key difference: You come to Scene to shop, not to be entertained.
Bar-Tal sees the Scene as a virtual “mall” where users can browse items, save items to their shopping carts, and make purchases.
Business has become an increasingly attractive use case for artificial intelligence tools such as chatbots and agents (including Meta’s Muse). However, Ba-Tar believes that AI shopping tools are missing something.
“Artificial intelligence is amazing when you know what you want, but it’s really important to have the ability to discover and observe things,” Ba-Tar said. He added that agency commerce “misses the point of shopping – that shopping is essentially an enjoyable experience.”
As Scene users scroll and interact with linked products in the app, the feed adapts to the brands or types of items the user is interested in. Scene then uses AI to generate scenes of people wearing or using these items.
Bar-Tal did not comment on which third-party models Dalet Labs uses.
Bar-Tal said Dalet Labs does not see its product as replacing influencers, but rather as “complementary.”
“The content here is artificial intelligence, but its purpose is not to replace creators because our purpose is not to create entertainment,” he said.
However, even if Scene isn’t competing with influencers for entertainment content, it’s still competing with their business model: making money by promoting branded products and ultimately driving sales.
Bar-Tal said Scene has a catalog of hundreds of brands and retailers and is building more partnerships. The company did not disclose further details on which brands Dalet Labs has partnered with.
The company also used affiliate marketing in its early days to monetize the app, Bar-Tal said, working with affiliates to earn money from every in-app transaction.
Dalet Labs’ Scene is entering a crowded app market, giving people ways to discover brands and products, like TikTok’s growing Shop business in the U.S. or Pinterest’s visual search capabilities. Startups such as Doji and Alta have also raised millions on the promise of technology that lets people try on clothes using AI-generated versions of themselves.
How will Dalet Labs get people to download the brand new app?
Leveraging influencers and social media to promote the app will be a core part of Dalet Labs’ user acquisition plan. It also plans to launch a coupon campaign during the holidays to offer new users discounts on purchases through the Scene app. Bar-Tal did not disclose whether the discounts were funded by Scene or brand partners.
Meanwhile, the New York-based startup is using pre-seed funding to hire more engineers and researchers to build out Scene.
Read Dalet Labs’ 5-page pitch for raising $7 million in pre-seed funding:
Provided by Dalet Labs
Deck starts with technical background
Provided by Dalet Labs
The content of the slide is as follows:
For more than half a century, every major shift in computing has been driven by an interface revolution.
The shift from terminals to graphical user interfaces (GUIs) transformed computers from specialists’ tools to mass-market products.
The excitement of the web and mobile devices has expanded this paradigm: each new medium makes digital interactions more visual, intuitive and easier to consume.
Text inherently requires active cognitive effort; visual interfaces go a step further, allowing users to grasp high-bandwidth information almost instantly with minimal cognitive effort.
Then explained the Dalet Labs paper
Provided by Dalet Labs
The content of the slide is as follows:
Today, artificial intelligence represents the most profound transformation in computing since the personal computer. Paradoxically, however, our interface with artificial intelligence is still stuck in the terminal era.
We talk to the model via text prompts and receive the text stream back synchronously. Our product theme is simple and unavoidable: artificial intelligence requires native GUIs.
We believe that artificial intelligence GUIs will not be based on programming code, but will be generated by media models.
The competition is then outlined
Provided by Dalet Labs
The content of the slide is as follows:
The core product of the AI consumption platform is inseparable from the text chat interface.
For example, the OpenAI brand is strictly associated with ChatGPT’s chat interface.
In addition, by decoupling the user interface from any specific model provider, we can integrate multiple cutting-edge models (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google or open source systems) and focus innovation on the new media generation GUI platform. As artificial intelligence models become commoditized, this modularization becomes increasingly valuable. Furthermore, their technology stack is rooted in the code generation paradigm, which contrasts with our focus on media models.
Finally, introduce the founder of Dalet Labs
Provided by Dalet Labs
The content of the slide is as follows:
Omar Bar-Tar