As marketers lose access to third-party tracking signals, Checkmate is taking a different route: build a large consented shopper network first, then turn that behavioral data into an AI-powered marketing platform. The company has unveiled mate, an AI marketing platform already used by more than 700 brands, including Everlane, Billabong, Brooklinen, Malbon and JD Sports.

The advertising industry's data problem has created an unusual opening for companies that can build direct relationships with consumers.

Checkmate believes it has spent years building one.

The consumer shopping platform, backed by Google Ventures, Mantis VC and investors including Paris Hilton, has revealed mate, an AI marketing platform that the company says is already used by more than 700 brands.

According to Checkmate, mate is profitable and is on track to finish 2026 at approximately a $15 million annualized run rate. The company also says its B2B marketing operation was built without marketing spend.

The announcement changes the way Checkmate's consumer business looks in retrospect.

When the company raised $15 million in 2023, its public identity centered on a shopping app that reached No. 1 on the U.S. App Store by offering consumers brand-approved promotional codes and cashback. What was less visible was the data infrastructure accumulating behind those transactions.

Today, Checkmate says that network includes more than 100 million shoppers and more than 12 billion live intent signals generated across app, email, SMS and desktop interactions.

That first-party data is now the foundation for mate's AI agents.

From Shopping App to Marketing Infrastructure

The shift comes at a difficult moment for performance marketers.

Apple's App Tracking Transparency framework significantly reduced the availability of cross-app tracking signals, while browsers including Safari and Firefox have restricted third-party cookies. Google's long-running Privacy Sandbox effort also changed direction after the company abandoned plans to eliminate third-party cookies in Chrome.

The result has been a marketing environment in which brands still want highly targeted acquisition, but have fewer reliable external signals with which to build audiences.

At the same time, generative AI has lowered the cost of producing marketing content.

Generating an advertisement, email variation or campaign concept is no longer necessarily the difficult part. The harder problem is knowing which customer should receive it, when they are likely to act and how the campaign can be connected to measurable commercial intent.

That is where Checkmate is positioning mate.

The platform combines AI agents with the company's shopper network, allowing marketing teams to use first-party behavioral signals to identify opportunities and execute campaigns.

The distinction is important. Mate is not simply another generative AI copywriting tool.

Its proposition is closer to an AI marketing operating layer that connects customer intelligence with campaign execution.

Why First-Party Shopper Data Matters

The strategic advantage Checkmate is claiming comes from the consumer network rather than the AI models themselves.

The company says every offer redeemed, price monitored and purchase interaction contributes to its understanding of shopper behavior.

That creates a feedback loop.

Consumer activity produces signals. Those signals inform marketing campaigns. Campaign outcomes generate additional information about shopper behavior, which can then inform future campaigns.

This is a familiar principle in customer data platforms and marketing analytics, but the scale and directness of the underlying shopping network are what Checkmate says differentiate mate.

Adobe Analytics reported that AI-driven traffic to U.S. retail sites increased 393% year over year in the first quarter of 2026. The growth highlights a broader transformation in digital discovery as consumers increasingly use AI systems alongside conventional search and shopping channels.

For marketers, that means the battle for customer intent is expanding beyond traditional advertising platforms.

Early Brand Results

Checkmate says Everlane attributed $480,000 in revenue to mate in less than 30 days across 2,450 orders, accompanied by a 30% increase in conversion.

Other brands joining the platform include Quiksilver, Dickies and Eddie Bauer. The company is also expanding beyond traditional e-commerce, with travel marketplace RVshare and financial products among the newer categories it says it is pursuing.

PSA Skincare offers another reported example. The company's Director of eCommerce, Adam McAreavy, said the business had considered eliminating Meta advertising before using mate and subsequently recorded a 150% increase in return on ad spend through the platform.

These are company-reported results, so they should not be treated as independently verified evidence of mate's incremental impact. Attribution is particularly difficult in modern advertising environments, where multiple channels can influence the same customer journey.

Still, the early results illustrate the type of outcome Checkmate is attempting to sell: measurable revenue rather than simply AI-generated marketing output.

AI Is Becoming the Execution Layer

The emergence of mate reflects a larger change across the MarTech market.

Salesforce, Adobe, Google and Microsoft are all integrating AI into marketing, customer data, advertising and analytics workflows. A growing number of startups are pursuing AI agents that can execute tasks traditionally handled by marketing operations teams.

The challenge is differentiation.

AI models themselves are increasingly accessible. Campaign generation, audience analysis and content production can be replicated by competing platforms.

Checkmate's argument is that its defensibility comes from distribution and proprietary first-party signals.

That is a more difficult asset to reproduce.

Building an AI agent can take months. Building a network of consumers who repeatedly interact with shopping offers—and hundreds of brands willing to participate—requires years of incentives, integrations, relationships and operational infrastructure.

The Consumer Business Becomes the Moat

Checkmate's unusual corporate structure may therefore be the most important part of the announcement.

The company is keeping the consumer shopping product under the Checkmate name while using it as the distribution layer for mate.

In effect, the consumer side supplies the audience and behavioral intelligence, while the B2B platform monetizes that infrastructure through marketing services.

It resembles a vertically integrated model in which audience acquisition, customer intelligence and campaign activation exist within the same ecosystem.

That structure also creates a potential network effect. More shoppers generate more signals; more brands create more offers and campaigns; and additional campaign activity can potentially make the platform more useful to both sides.

Whether that becomes a durable moat will depend on data quality, consumer consent, advertiser performance and the company's ability to maintain trust as AI agents gain greater control over marketing execution.

For now, Checkmate is betting that the future of AI marketing will not be won by whoever generates the most content.

It will be won by whoever has the strongest connection to real consumer intent.

Market Landscape

The MarTech industry is shifting from third-party audience targeting toward first-party data, identity resolution, customer data platforms and AI-powered activation.

Google, Adobe, Salesforce and Microsoft are building increasingly sophisticated AI capabilities into enterprise marketing ecosystems, while specialist platforms are competing through proprietary data, automation and vertical expertise.

Checkmate's strategy is differentiated by starting with a consumer shopping network and using that audience infrastructure to power its B2B marketing product.

That model addresses a fundamental problem created by privacy changes: brands need actionable customer intelligence but have less access to external behavioral data.

The market is consequently moving toward consented first-party signals and systems capable of converting those signals into measurable marketing outcomes.

Strategic Outlook

Mate's launch highlights a broader question for AI marketing platforms: where does the proprietary data come from?

AI can automate campaign production, but automation without differentiated customer intelligence risks becoming interchangeable.

Checkmate's consumer network gives it a potentially valuable asset, provided the company can demonstrate that its signals produce incremental results and that consumer trust remains intact.

If the model works at scale, the company could occupy an interesting position between a customer data platform, marketing automation system and advertising network.

That would put it in competition with established MarTech ecosystems while giving it a more vertically integrated data-and-distribution model.

Top Insights

• Checkmate's mate platform combines AI marketing agents with first-party shopper data, targeting brands struggling with privacy-driven signal loss and fragmented customer journeys.
• The company says more than 700 brands use mate, giving its AI system a large commercial network from which to develop campaign intelligence.
• Checkmate's consumer shopping app generated the data foundation before mate launched, creating a potential competitive moat that generic AI marketing tools cannot easily replicate.
• Reported results from Everlane and PSA Skincare suggest strong early performance, although the company's attribution figures remain independently unverified.
• The launch reflects a broader MarTech shift toward first-party data, AI campaign execution and proprietary distribution as third-party tracking becomes less dependable.

Get in touch with our MarTech Experts