District Raises $14.7M Seed Funding to Grow Online Commerce Platform

District is an AI powered commerce platform that helps creators, entrepreneurs, and brands build and grow online businesses. Users can create custom and interactive shopping experiences without coding or hiring engineers. After spending three years developing the platform, and onboarding more than 1,000 businesses, District is now officially available for everyone to use and scale their business.

Buying has moved from simple websites to more live, social, and community based experiences, but most tools for independent businesses haven’t kept up. Many platforms still use rigid systems that limit control over customer data, experience, and relationships. This often forces creators, and brands to give up ownership, flexibility, and better ways to sell and experiment.

At the same time, AI has made it much easier and cheaper to build software. What used to take engineers months to develop can now be created in just a few hours.

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By removing technical barriers, brands can now build and sell online the way they want. This makes it easier for anyone to turn ideas into a business, with features like live streams, auctions, subscriptions, and more. On District, key capabilities include:

AI Builder creates fully customized storefronts and selling experiences, like live shopping, from a simple prompt: users describe their business, products, and audience, and the system builds it for them. Commerce Manager acts as the main dashboard to run daily operations such as listings, inventory, subscriptions, payments, fulfillment, and moderation in one place. Backend Services provide enterprise-level support like fraud protection, customer support, dispute handling, and buyer and seller protection.

Demand for flexible, owned commerce infrastructure is growing quickly. District also supports enterprise brands that need more than standard tools, giving them the freedom to test new ways of selling and scale without strict platform limits.

“As the cost of software development approaches zero, the winners will be platforms that combine speed, adaptability, and real infrastructure,” said Bryan Kim, Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “District enables businesses to run complex commerce operations without the traditional overhead, handling infrastructure, and operational layers behind the scenes, so brands can easily invest in new and changing selling formats. District is well-positioned to power a meaningful share of new commerce businesses created in the years ahead.”

“Whenever a group of people forms around a shared interest, commerce naturally follows,” said Eddie Koai, CEOm and co founder of District. “We saw it everywhere, in fandoms, resale communities and employee groups. People were already buying and selling with each other, but they were using makeshift tools. District exists to turn those informal, high trust marketplaces into real, scalable businesses. We are building infrastructure so anyone with a product, audience, or idea can create their own commerce platform.”

About District

Founded by Edward Koai, Khoi Tran, and Patrick M., District is an AI commerce platform that helps anyone build and grow an online business. Created by former Snap product, and tech leads, the platform lets users build custom shopping experiences like live selling, auctions, marketplaces and paid communities without needing technical skills.

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