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Stockwell AI Profile: Pandemic Layoffs, Business Model, and Current Status

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The profile

Stockwell AI, the Bay Area vending-cabinet startup founded in 2017 and first known as Bodega, told TechCrunch on June 15, 2020 that it would wind down on July 1. It had raised at least $45 million and placed about 1,000 cabinets in apartment and office buildings. Layoffs.fyi recorded the closure as a 100 percent cut. In August 2020 a vending-technology company, 365 Retail Markets, announced that it had acquired Stockwell.

  • Category: smart vending / unattended retail
  • Pandemic-layoff role: Deepest-cut ranking company
  • Last updated: 2026-09-26

Founders, executives and investors

Two former Google employees, Paul McDonald and Ashwath Rajan, founded the company in 2017, TechCrunch reported; McDonald was chief executive, and Rajan appeared to have left by December 2019. The Bodega name drew public anger at launch because of how the company described replacing mom-and-pop shops, and the company later renamed itself Stockwell. By September 2019 its investors included NEA, GV, DCM Ventures, Forerunner, First Round and Homebrew.

Business before the pandemic

A Stockwell "store" was a locked cabinet stocked with drinks, snacks and a few household basics such as laundry detergent and painkillers. Shoppers unlocked it with a smartphone app, and sensors charged them for what they took out. TechCrunch compared the machines to hotel minibars. The company stocked and serviced the cabinets and put them in apartment buildings, offices and, according to its website, hotels. In the fall of 2019 it was preparing to let building and office managers choose more of what went inside.

What the pandemic changed

TechCrunch gave two reasons the pandemic hit the model: people stayed home and bought in bulk, and shoppers and the staff who restocked the cabinets worried about touching unattended machines. Some vending distributors had seen business fall by as much as 90 percent. The European Vending Association's president, appealing to governments for financial assistance in April 2020, said the sector's business was down 90 percent.

"Regretfully, the current landscape has created a situation in which we can no longer continue our operations and will be winding down the company on July 1st," McDonald wrote to TechCrunch. The company had spent the previous week telling its building customers; one building operator told TechCrunch it was looking for a replacement provider. SBA's PPP loan data list no borrower named Stockwell AI or Bodega AI.

After the shutdown

On July 11, 2020, ten days after the stated closing date, the Stockwell website was still advertising "fully managed, customizable retail for apartments, offices, hotels, and more" and asking visitors to download the app.

On August 13, 2020, 365 Retail Markets, which describes itself as "the global leader of self-service technology and services for the Contract Foodservice industry," announced that it had acquired Stockwell and that Stockwell had confirmed the sale. It said it would hire select members of Stockwell's team, fold the technology into its own point-of-sale systems, keep servicing the more than 1,000 Stockwell locations, and use the patented technology as the base for new products in 2021. The announcement gave no price.

Sources

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