Eko Builds Arkansas Capture Factory for Retail AI Training Data

Retail AI company Eko is operating a specialized facility in Arkansas where hand models and food stylists create detailed digital catalogs of consumer products intended to train artificial intelligence systems for shopping applications. The company, backed by venture capital firms including Insight Partners and Krafton, is cataloging products from bolts of fabric to frozen meals in a process designed to produce training data for retail-focused AI models. Workers carefully photograph, measure, and document items to create structured datasets. Eko aims to build what it describes as a comprehensive catalog of physical goods to power AI shopping assistants that can identify products, answer questions about specifications, and recommend alternatives. The approach addresses a gap in AI training data, as most large language models lack detailed knowledge of specific retail products. The company represents a growing segment of startups focused on creating specialized training datasets for vertical AI applications rather than relying on general-purpose web scraping.