A new AI-powered search engine has entered the chat, aiming to transform how people shop with its design built exclusively for fashion.

Created by Julie Bornstein and Lisa Green, Daydream is the first AI-powered, chat-based shopping agent for fashion. The platform’s public beta launch offers an AI-powered, chat-based shopping agent that aims to usher in a new era for online fashion shopping. The platform allows the user to ask for fashion items in a conversational way and is served with options from more than 200 retail and brand partners, representing more than 8,000 global fashion brands and nearly 2 million products.

Featured launch partners include Alo Yoga, Loveshack Fancy, Khaite, Mytheresa, Net-a-porter, Uniqlo, Doen and Cult Mia. Daydream has been backed by $50 million in seed funding from investors including Forerunner Ventures, Index Ventures, Google Ventures and True Ventures.

Both Green, cofounder and chief commercial officer of Daydream, and Bornstein, cofounder and chief executive officer, have extensive experience in the fashion and technology space, including roles at Pinterest, Stitch Fix, Sephora, Nordstrom and Condé Nast.

 The duo previously worked together at Bornstein’s AI-powered shopping start-up company The Yes, which was sold to Pinterest in 2022, before teaming up to launch Daydream.

With Daydream, the team aims to elevate the discovery experience for online fashion shopping. The chat-based shopping agent is powered by advanced natural language understanding and multimodal AI, introducing a fashion-forward “chat to shop” experience that is personalized to the consumer. Features include an understanding of intent and adaptation to individual style while the chat responds like a personal shopper.

“Daydream is a truly transformational shopping experience,” Green told WWD. “More than anything else, what we are doing is reinventing the way people can search and discover things that they love, particularly in fashion.”

Green said that as the conversation around AI’s revolution continues and brands seek out ways to leverage that technology, the possibility of helping the shopping experience is not unique. But with Daydream, there is an added level of sophistication with a real fashion intelligence and authority, the founders claim.

Importantly, the platform’s AI has also been designed to learn and evolve. By starting with a language interface that understands intent, context and style, Daydream will address barriers to online shopping that have frustrated consumers. New features, including expanded brand partnerships and feedback-driven updates, will be launched on a rolling basis.

“Online shopping today is completely overwhelming and time-consuming,” Bornstein said. “Traditional search falls short in fashion because it doesn’t understand the nuances of personal taste. By leveraging large language models and combining them with a deep understanding of the fashion space, we’re building the online shopping platform of the future.”

Bornstein added that her vision for Daydream is to “become the smartest destination of fashion information, advice and products online.”

In practice, the consumer will receive a Style Passport, an evolving profile with fit preferences, style signals, brand affinities and price sensitivity, among other preferences, on the Daydream platform. As the user shops on Daydream, it will adapt in real-time for better results that are tailored to the individual. Once the shopper selects an item to purchase the platform will direct them to the brand or retailer’s website to complete the transaction.

“What we’ve done, from extensive research, from our backgrounds and [using] a lot of data we’ve put in, is we’ve started to understand that if you really understand somebody’s brand preferences and price point, you’re 90 percent of the way there,” Green said. “When you ask somebody, ‘What are your favorite brands?’, everyone draws a blank. As they start to use the product, and we see what they’re saving and what they’re clicking on, what they like, how they’re navigating, where they’re pivoting, we’ll learn more and we’ll keep adding.”

As the user likes items, the platform’s dynamic AI builds collections with smart tags for the shopper to revisit later. These collections also help inform later search results. Green said she sees the core consumer for Daydream as the “avid online shopper who has been using traditional methods but is aware that it could be better. It’s the early digital adopters that will probably be the initial cohort.”

For brands, Daydream is a potential solution to drive traffic that many have been extremely receptive to with the additional benefit of shared data. Green said that looking back at her conversations with luxury brands in 2012, today is a “different world” in terms of the openness to partnering with technology.

“First, everyone’s struggling with traffic,” Green said. “They definitely have to get more traffic to their sites. And the second thing is, I think there’s an enormous amount of pressure on how you are going to implement this new technology and fashion brands, by and large, don’t want AI to rob their creativity. So, I think this is a really good way to become involved with AI.”

Moreover, she said, she hopes that the platform can help elevate emerging designers who struggle to get discovered and drive traffic, noting that it is so common to get “lost in the shuffle.”

“I was drawn to Daydream because it brings real innovation to how people discover fashion online,” a representative from Nili Lotan told WWD. “The technology feels effortless — it understands both intent and personal style, which makes the experience feel curated in a way that’s never felt possible at scale. It’s a glimpse into the future of shopping.”

“I hope that we’re also able to elevate emerging designers,” Green said. “It’s much harder for them to get discovered, to drive traffic. All of these that are sort of getting lost in the shuffle.”

As the company launches, Green told WWD that Daydream sees itself as a tech company in the service of fashion.

“[Daydream] is in service of fashion to the customer, but also to the entire industry,” Green said. “Where we could be a place where we can help with brand discovery, with new collections, with elevation [but] even for rediscovery, like brands you haven’t shopped in a long time, stores you haven’t shopped from in a while. [Daydream is] disrupting the way that you’re able to shop. What we want to do is elevate the entire industry.”