Irish-founded retail technology startup Source has successfully raised $1.4 million in pre-seed funding to advance its AI-powered platform that automates stock purchasing for retailers. Headquartered in Dublin and incorporated in the U.S. as QuickFind AI, Inc., Source targets the operational challenges faced by small and medium-sized retail businesses, which often still rely heavily on manual methods like email and Excel spreadsheets for inventory procurement.
Source’s CEO and co-founder, Liam Fuller, who is just 18 years old, has displayed remarkable entrepreneurial acumen and technical sophistication from a young age. Fuller comes from an entrepreneurial background and previously launched CartShare, a Shopify plug-in developed during the Stripe × OpenAI-backed Patch youth accelerator. An incident during his school years, where he took a venture capital call in the school bathroom leading to a two-day suspension and viral attention, underscores his determined hustle.
The core idea behind Source emerged from Fuller’s conversations with various retailers, including a pharmacy in Dublin, who revealed that three or four staff members managed purchasing for tens of thousands of stock-keeping units (SKUs) valued at tens of millions of euros, all through unimaginably manual channels like emails and Excel. Fuller was motivated to create a solution after realizing that much of the retail sector’s revenue still comes from physical stores and that the procurement process was largely unautomated and inefficient.
Source harnesses agentic AI to ingest and process unstructured data from multiple inputs — including inventory reports, invoices, email inboxes, ERP systems, and spreadsheets — to produce actionable purchasing recommendations. The platform offers a user-friendly interface that combines a prompt-driven ordering tool with a Suggested Order feature, designed to assist buyers overwhelmed by large SKU counts and long working hours. It integrates seamlessly with existing systems through API connections without requiring businesses to overhaul their current technology stacks.
The company’s approach acknowledges that while large retailers often invest heavily in ERP systems costing tens of millions annually, smaller retailers are underserved by bulky, expensive solutions. Fuller’s vision is to provide a lighter-weight, empowering tool that lets existing systems work better, reducing the administrative burden on retail buyers who face intense competition from local businesses.
Source’s technology aims to save retailers significant time — buyers have reported spending up to six hours daily on tedious admin tasks — and to surface missed sales opportunities through data-driven insights. Reaction from pilot users has been positive, especially concerning Source’s modern user interface, which contrasts sharply with legacy ERP software that can be decades old. This disruption has already unsettled some established vendors.
The recent $1.4 million funding round was led by Square Peg, a venture capital firm notable for backing high-profile tech companies such as Canva and Airwallex. Other investors include former Stripe CTO David Singleton and the Xtripe angel syndicate. Square Peg co-founder Paul Bassat praised Fuller’s rare combination of technical skill and commercial insight at such a young age, highlighting his ability to execute and adapt as key to Source’s promising growth trajectory. Fuller is their youngest portfolio founder to date.
Currently, Source is conducting nearly ten pilot programmes primarily in Ireland, the UK, and with plans to expand into the US market, where Fuller sees significant opportunities given the larger number of conglomerates, more complex ERP ecosystems, and diverse distribution channels. The funding will enable Source to double its engineering team, launch US pilots in the autumn, and support an anticipated relocation to Silicon Valley later this year to tap into the vibrant innovation ecosystem there.
Fuller emphasises that Source is still refining its product to help buyers not only automate existing workflows but improve purchasing decisions fundamentally — a capability only possible through hands-on customer deployment and real-world learning.
In sum, Source exemplifies a new wave of AI startups focused on modernising overlooked, traditional industries. By introducing advanced reasoning models and agentic AI to small and medium-sized retailers grappling with outdated procurement processes, Source is aiming to transform a critical, yet manually intensive business function at an early stage, led by an unusually young but highly driven founder. This effort aligns with broader trends where AI-driven enterprise tools are moving beyond niche applications like chatbots into deeply operational roles with measurable business impact.
Source: Noah Wire Services
