Shahan Ohanessian, Co-Founder and CEO, VenHub Global – Interview Series

Shahan Ohanessian, Co-Founder and CEO, VenHub Global, is the driving force behind the company’s vision to transform retail through automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence. With a background in computer science and robotics, he leads VenHub’s strategy and execution, focusing on scaling fully autonomous retail stores that operate 24/7 without on-site staff. Ohanessian has positioned the company at the intersection of AI, robotics, and logistics, guiding product development, partnerships, and expansion as VenHub advances toward broader national and international deployment.

VenHub Global is an autonomous retail technology company building AI-powered “Smart Stores” designed to operate without employees while delivering a seamless, mobile-enabled shopping experience. Its compact, self-contained units use robotics and automated inventory systems to fulfill orders in real time, allowing customers to shop around the clock. With operational locations in Los Angeles and expansion plans underway, VenHub aims to modernize retail infrastructure by deploying scalable, automated stores in urban centers, transit hubs, and other high-traffic environments.

What led you to found VenHub, and what problem in urban retail were you most determined to solve when you started the company?

When I started VenHub, it was because I noticed that retail was one of the only industries that hadn’t been truly disrupted like others. Traditional models were still facing fundamental limitations – staffing shortages, high operating costs, shrinkage, and inefficiencies that made scaling difficult. I wanted something better: a retail solution that just works – smart, secure, consistent, and open 24/7.

From day one, we’ve worked backwards from our customers’ needs. By continuously refining our offerings based on real demand, we’re able to serve multiple verticals, from transit hubs to residential communities. That demand has allowed us to thoughtfully integrate our stores where they solve real problems. VenHub wasn’t built around technology for its own sake – it was built to remove friction from retail.

VenHub’s Smart Stores rely heavily on robotics. How do the robotic arms operate inside the store, and what role does AI play in coordinating picking, storage, and transaction handling in real time?

Our robotic arms are central to how VenHub operates. They are designed to reliably fetch items from shelves and place them precisely into dispensing platforms that customers access. AI orchestrates this entire process from recognizing products on the shelf to selecting the most efficient retrieval strategy and coordinating simultaneous tasks across the store. That AI layer also ensures that transactions, inventory movement, and task prioritization happen seamlessly in real time so the experience feels smooth, intuitive, and fast for the customer.

From a technical standpoint, what were the biggest engineering challenges in building a fully autonomous retail system that can run continuously without on-site staff?

Creating a system that runs reliably 24/7 without humans on site is extremely complex. It means designing robotics and automation that just don’t fail in real-world environments, integrating predictive diagnostics so failures can be anticipated and addressed without interrupting service, and ensuring AI can adapt to various product types and physical conditions. Balancing speed and reliability while maintaining safety and uptime was one of the biggest engineering hurdles, and it’s something we continue refining through self-diagnosing systems and advanced monitoring.

How does VenHub manage inventory planning and restocking across locations, especially in high-traffic environments like transit hubs, and what data signals or thresholds determine when a store needs to be restocked versus reviewed by a human?

We rely heavily on real-time analytics and AI forecasting. Our system tracks sales velocity, time-of-day demand patterns, location behavior, and historical purchasing trends to predict inventory depletion before it happens.

But again, we work backwards from the customer. If a location demands faster replenishment or a different product mix, we adapt. By continuously refining our offerings based on real usage data and customer needs, we can serve different verticals effectively, whether that’s a high-volume transit hub or a residential deployment.

Thresholds are built into the system to trigger automated restocking alerts and anomaly detection flags when something requires human review, whether it’s unexpected demand spikes or a performance irregularity.

Even in a highly automated system, there are moments where autonomy has limits. In which scenarios is a human still required in the loop, whether for oversight, exception handling, maintenance, or decision-making?

Autonomy is powerful, but it’s not absolute. We still rely on humans for strategic oversight, handling complex exceptions that go beyond algorithmic rules, and performing physical maintenance when diagnostics identify a need. Our predictive health systems aim to notify support teams before issues cause impacts, but technicians are essential for repairs, component swaps, and exceptional cases that automation simply cannot address without a physical presence.

How do you balance speed and autonomy with safety, reliability, and error recovery when robotic systems are handling thousands of transactions in public spaces?

Safety and reliability must be design priorities, not afterthoughts. We embed predictive health monitoring and self-diagnosing capabilities into every component, so performance degradation is tracked continuously. If any subsystem needs service, it can gracefully deactivate while the rest of the store continues operating. That layered redundancy, combined with rigorous testing, enables us to push the envelope on speed and autonomy without sacrificing safety or uptime even in high-traffic public spaces.

VenHub compresses deployment timelines dramatically compared to traditional retail. What design or infrastructure decisions made it possible to install and activate a Smart Store in roughly seven days?

We deliberately engineered our units to be self-contained and modular from day one. Everything from the robotics and shelving systems to the inventory tracking and mobile checkout is pre-integrated and field-tested before deployment. By eliminating the need for construction, extensive configuration, or on-site customization, we can ship a store, set it up, connect it to power and network, and have it live in a matter of days. That simplicity and standardization are core to why installations can happen so fast.

As VenHub scales to more locations, how do logistics and supply chain coordination evolve to support consistent performance across cities, regions, and eventually countries?

Scaling starts with standardization, but it’s guided by customer demand. We work backwards from the requirements of each deployment environment and vertical. As demand grows, we integrate stores in a way that reflects real-world usage patterns, not assumptions.

Operationally, this means centralized software control, remote diagnostics, predictive inventory planning, and regional logistics hubs that support consistent uptime. As we expand across cities and eventually internationally, our supply chain becomes more localized, but the AI backbone ensures performance consistency everywhere.

Our goal is simple: deploy faster, operate smarter, and adapt continuously based on what customers actually need.

Looking ahead, how do you see the role of robotics expanding inside VenHub stores, and where do you intentionally see humans remaining part of the system as autonomous retail becomes more widespread?

Robotics will continue to become more capable and adaptive, with things like vision systems that automate shelf calibration, dynamic merchandising based on real-time demand, and increasingly sophisticated autonomous decision loops. But humans will remain critically involved in strategic oversight, exceptional problem solving, customer experience design, and creative innovation. Automation amplifies what people can accomplish, but strategic human judgment and physical service will continue to be essential partners in the ecosystem.

Thank you for the great interview, readers who wish to learn more should visit VenHub Global.