Merso, a stealth-mode startup led by David Perez-Iturralde, has raised $3 million in seed funding to build the next generation of personalized artificial intelligence for consumer experiences. While investor details remain undisclosed, the capital signals growing confidence in the startup’s vision to humanize AI-driven interactions at scale.

The funding round positions Merso at the intersection of two massive trends: hyper-personalization in digital commerce and the emergence of adaptive, memory-driven AI as the next frontier in user experience.

Though still operating quietly, Merso is reportedly developing a platform that brings deeply tailored AI assistants to industries such as retail, entertainment, wellness, and customer service - giving users a new kind of interface: one that adapts to them, not the other way around.

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The Opportunity: AI That Feels Personal - Not Programmed

As generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini become mainstream, users are beginning to feel the limitations of “one-size-fits-all” assistants. While powerful, most models still lack emotional nuance, behavioral continuity, and contextual memory across interactions.

This creates a growing gap in industries where personalization isn’t just a competitive advantage - it’s a customer expectation. From virtual shopping to personal wellness coaching, users want experiences that feel alive, responsive, and unique to them.

Merso is aiming to bridge that gap by combining large language models with behavioral modeling, contextual memory, and fine-grained persona tuning - giving each user an assistant that evolves alongside them.

In a saturated AI market, personalization isn’t about surface-level preference matching. It’s about creating emotional infrastructure - systems that remember, adapt, and anticipate. When you embed memory into your product’s architecture, you stop building tools and start building companions. That changes everything: session length, retention, even perceived intelligence.

Startups that treat LLMs as static APIs will get stuck in the utility layer. But those that build persistent, personality-driven layers on top of models - like Merso - is aiming to - will own the interface, the relationship, and eventually, the behavior loops that drive monetization.

This is how AI stops being a backend feature and becomes a core brand asset.

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What Merso Is Building

While the company is still in stealth, early signals suggest Merso is focused on:

• Customizable AI personas – Each user interacts with an assistant fine-tuned to their preferences, style, tone, and behavioral signals.
  
• Memory-aware dialogue – Conversations evolve across time with personalized responses based on user history.
  
• Multimodal engagement – Support for voice, text, and potentially visual expression for immersive interaction.
  
• Privacy-first architecture – Exploring edge-first or hybrid deployments to keep user data localized and secure.
  

In essence, Merso is not just another chatbot. It’s building relational AI - where interaction is continuous, emotionally intelligent, and architected for loyalty, not just functionality.

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Why It Matters Now

Consumer expectations are shifting faster than most platforms can adapt. A McKinsey report found that 71% of consumers expect personalized interactions, and 76% get frustrated when those expectations aren’t met. Brands that excel in personalization see 40% more revenue growth than their competitors.

Meanwhile, AI itself is evolving:

• 82% of executives now say personalization is their top AI investment priority (Deloitte, 2024).
  
• The global market for AI-driven personalization is expected to reach $68 billion by 2030 (Markets & Markets).
  
• AI avatars and assistants in sectors like shopping, learning, and entertainment are projected to be a $22B+ category by 2027 (Juniper Research).
  

With its focus on memory and behavioral continuity, Merso is playing where this market is headed - not where it’s been.

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The Founder: David Perez-Iturralde

David Perez-Iturralde brings a sharp blend of entrepreneurial experience and product intuition to Merso. With a background spanning AI strategy, media, and digital engagement, he has built and scaled products that blend emotion with engineering - and understands how to align product design with evolving consumer psychology.

His leadership reflects Merso’s larger philosophy: AI shouldn’t just respond - it should relate.

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The Bigger Trend: Personalized AI Is Becoming the Interface Itself

The race to AI adoption has now entered a new phase - from capability to connection. Users aren’t just asking “Can this model answer me?” - they’re asking “Does it get me?”

In this context:

• Startups like Replika, Character.ai, and Inflection’s Pi have validated emotional AI for consumer use.
  
• B2B platforms are now seeking emotionally responsive agents for support, onboarding, and sales.
  
• Open-source frameworks like LangChain and MemoryGPT are enabling memory-aware interfaces, but few startups are productizing them well - yet.
  

Merso’s value lies in translating these technical shifts into a mainstream, lovable product.

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What’s Next for Merso

With $3 million in fresh capital, Merso is expected to:

• Grow its research and design teams, especially in AI memory architecture and human-AI interaction design.
  
• Pilot its first deployments in verticals such as luxury retail, coaching, and digital wellness.
  
• Begin private beta testing with high-engagement use cases that demand continuity and emotional tone.
  
• Develop edge-compatible deployment strategies to ensure privacy-first, fast-response interactions.
  

If the future of interfaces is relational, Merso is staking an early and ambitious claim. And if it succeeds, it won’t just reshape how we use AI - it may reshape how we relate to it entirely.

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