Miami Founders Get Six-Figure AWS Investment

Big news for Miami’s tech scene! Entrepreneurs Justin Elliott and Jahreem Samuels have secured a significant six-figure investment from Amazon Web Services (AWS) for their groundbreaking venture, WRTH. This innovative platform is being hailed as the world’s first AI and blockchain-verified commerce platform, poised to transform how businesses operate online.

From Shared Pain Points to a Unified Vision

Elliott and Samuels’ paths converged through shared challenges in their respective industries. Elliott, with a background in mechanical engineering, marketing, and web development, spent a decade as a full-time DJ before the pandemic prompted a shift back to tech. He sought a profession that wasn’t tied to physical presence, leading him to connect with Samuels.

Samuels, a serial entrepreneur since high school, had already achieved significant success with Sneaker Buyers, scaling the business from selling out of a trunk to a storefront with over $10 million in sales. However, he faced a major hurdle: the tedious process of authenticating, valuing, and inventorying items using multiple systems. “How can I scale this?” he wondered, struggling to find a single platform that could streamline his operations.

WRTH: The Solution Born from Necessity

Elliott, who experienced similar frustrations managing luxury items like Rolexes and Patek Philippes using up to eight different systems, found common ground with Samuels. After a two-hour conversation, they realized they could build a solution together. “If this problem hasn’t been solved since then, how can we figure out how to solve this problem?” Elliott recalled thinking. This led to the development of WRTH, launched in 2024.

WRTH is an AI-powered, blockchain-verified e-commerce operating system designed to be highly customizable. It understands commerce across various sectors, including service, resale, fashion, automotive, and collectibles. The platform boasts over 50 AI agents capable of handling tasks like pricing assessment, inventory valuation, fulfillment optimization, customer support, analytics, and fraud management across more than 15 sales channels.

The Power of AI and Blockchain

The integration of blockchain verification is key to WRTH’s offering, ensuring item authentication, ownership tracking, and fraud resolution by linking sellers to their personal wallets. Elliott explained the significance of this technology: “We’re at the precipice of where AI and blockchain is actually emerging in a way that makes sense… It’s a lot of focus on tokenization of assets. That means taking the world’s things and putting them on [blockchain] so that they have provenance.”

This provenance allows for tracking and proving ownership, unlocking liquidity in assets and facilitating faster transactions with verified records. Elliott added, “We’re building the infrastructure… so that every business… are equipped to be able to keep up with the trends, not get left behind, and also increase their revenue by taking advantage of the new ways that things are being done and just make business fair equitable and up to the times.”

AWS Investment Fuels Global Growth

The recent six-figure investment from AWS, secured through the AWS Activate startup program, is a major boost for WRTH. The funding, along with over $100,000 in credits, will be instrumental in scaling the company globally, particularly to support a major client that attracts over 20 million monthly users. Elliott highlighted the necessity of AWS’s robust infrastructure, stating, “We needed that infrastructure to scale… We’re building out a custom marketplace solution for a client that gets over 20 million users to their site a month… We needed the infrastructure to be able to handle that kind of load.”

WRTH is currently in beta testing and is set to officially launch on December 3rd, just in time for Miami’s Art Basel. The company also aims to close its pre-seed funding round, seeking to raise $2 million, which will further solidify its position in the market.