Checkmate hid a $15M ARR AI ad platform inside a shopping app
While the ad industry was dealing with signal loss, Checkmate was quietly building the thing that signal loss made valuable: a direct line to 100 million-plus shoppers, fully consented, with 12 billion live intent signals collected over years of real transactions.
The company just put a name on it. mate is the AI marketing platform that was running inside Checkmate’s consumer shopping app the whole time. It now serves 700-plus brands including Everlane, Billabong, Brooklinen, Malbon, and JD Sports. The business is profitable and on track to exit 2026 at roughly a $15 million run rate. According to the company, it got there with zero marketing spend on the B2B side.
The setup that made this work
When Checkmate raised $15 million in 2023, it looked like a consumer play: a shopping app that hit number one on the U.S. App Store by connecting shoppers with real promo codes and cash back. The B2B business on the other side of those transactions was never announced.
Every offer redeemed, every price tracked, every purchase across app, email, SMS, and desktop was building a picture of how shoppers actually decide. That data is what mate’s AI agents run on. The consumer side earned the audience. The brand side monetized the understanding.
The numbers brands are reporting
Everlane attributed $480,000 in revenue to mate across 2,450 orders in under 30 days, with a 30% lift in conversion. PSA Skincare reported a 150% lift in return on ad spend. The company also added Quiksilver, Dickies, and Eddie Bauer this month and is expanding beyond ecommerce into travel (RVshare) and financial products.
For context on why the timing matters: Adobe Analytics reported AI traffic to U.S. retail sites up 393% year over year in Q1 2026. Consented first-party data is harder to buy than ever, and mate’s entire pitch is that Checkmate spent years earning it rather than purchasing it.
The operator angle
The structural play here is worth noting for anyone building a two-sided business. Checkmate ran a consumer product at scale, absorbed the cost of building the audience, and then monetized the data asset on the B2B side without publicly connecting the two. Co-founder Rory Garton-Smith, previously an iPhone engineering program manager at Apple, framed it directly:
“The software was never the moat. The moat is a hundred million shoppers who show up for offers, and seven hundred brands whose campaigns get smarter because of each other. That took years of unglamorous work, and it is why the agents work.”
Checkmate keeps its consumer brand and its shopper network. mate is now the name on the marketing platform side. Total raised to date: $20 million from Google Ventures, Mantis VC, Wischoff Ventures, and angel investors including Paris Hilton and operators from Pinterest, Rakuten, and Amazon.
I’m founder of BizStack at Cagri Sarigoz LLC and a passionate advocate for entrepreneurs.
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