Funding

Zopa Receives $41 Million Investment to Support Challenger Bank Launch

Zopa Receives $41 Million Investment to Support Challenger Bank Launch
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Zopa

P2P lending pioneer Zopa just picked up $41 million (£32 million) in new funding that will go a long way toward helping the company prepare for the roll-out of its challenger bank later this year. “This investment gives us additional resources to continue our growth, support the launch of our next generation bank, and bring our award-winning products to even more people in the U.K.,” Zopa CEO Jaidev Janardana said. The round was led by Wadhawan Global Capital of India and European venture capital fund, Northzone. Zopa’s total funding stands at more than $111 million.

The investment arrives less than a month after Zopa earned full authorization for P2P lending from the FCA. This authorization was a necessary step for the company to launch its Innovative Finance ISAs, a new investment product with target returns of 6.1% that is scheduled to be available by mid-June. In May, Zopa also previewed Zopa Core, a P2P investment product with target returns of 3.9%. The solution is slated to debut in December and replace some of the company’s other offerings.

One small step toward offering IFISAs is also one giant leap toward Zopa’s goal of building a challenger bank. Last fall Zopa announced plans to launch a challenger bank that would complement the company’s P2P lending business by providing a broader range of financial services products – including FSCS-protected savings accounts and IFISAs. “We believe we are uniquely placed to re-define what people should be able to expect from personal finance products in the 21st century,” Janardana wrote, announcing the news of “next generation bank” at the Zopa blog in November.

Founded in 2007 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Zopa made its Finovate debut in 2008. Over the past year, the company has enabled more than $1 billion (£800m) in personal loans in the U.K. In January, Zopa became the first P2P lender in Europe to top £2 billion ($2.5 billion) in loans facilitated.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

NetGuardians Raises More than $8 Million in Series C

NetGuardians Raises More than $8 Million in Series C
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, NetGuardians

With an infusion of $8.7 (CHF 8.5) million in new capital, Swiss anti-fraud specialist NetGuardians now has more than $14 million in total funding. The Series C round was led by Swisscom Ventures and Freemont Management, and the company says the financing will help fuel the company’s “continued global expansion,” support additional investment in its anti-fraud platform, and add talent to the NetGuardians team.

“This collaboration with Swisscom represents recognition from a leader in this Swiss market,” NetGuardians’ Chief Operating Officer Raffael Maio said. “We are thrilled that they are recognizing our success and our potential. The investment will help us double the headcount in the coming 18 months.” Andreas Pages of Swisscom’s Business Unit Fintech highlighted NetGuardians’ technology as the kind of “agile and compelling software” that will improve risk mitigation for FIs. “Their highly innovative technology is changing the way to fight financial crime,” Pages said.

Pictured (left to right): NetGuardians Digital Marketing Manager Mine Fornerod and Regional Director for Asia, Eric Margaryan demonstrating FraudGuardian at FinovateAsia 2016.

Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland, NetGuardians made its Finovate debut at FinovateAsia in Hong Kong last fall.  At the conference, Digital Marketing Manager Mine Fornerod and Regional Director for Asia Eric Margaryan demonstrated FraudGuardian, a solution that leverages dynamic profiling, pattern-based intelligence, and predictive analytics to provide real-time fraud detection. For the demonstration, Fornerod and Margaryan set the scene of a risk manager who had received a violation alert from FraudGuardian via SMS, and then showed how the technology was able to track down the source of a series of fraudulent transactions. “Thanks to our ground-breaking, unique, holistic approach, you can actually correlate all these user behaviors and really identify the fraudsters with 100% reliability and prevent fraud in real-time,” Fornerod said.

Named to Planet Compliance’s inaugural RegTech Top 100 Power list this spring, NetGuardians partnered with Swiss academic institution, HEIG-VD to use machine learning and AI to build new, fraud-fighting technologies in February and, in January, announced that Keystone Bank in Nigeria would deploy its FraudGuardian technology. With FIs in more than 14 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, NetGuardians has gained 20 new clients and opened offices in Singapore and Kenya in the past year and a half.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Additiv Lands $25.5 Million Investment

Additiv Lands $25.5 Million Investment
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: additiv, Funding

Digital financial solutions company additiv has scored $25.5 million (CHF21 million) this week. The investment, which comes from BZ Bank and Patinex, marks the company’s first round of funding.

The investment will help additiv meet demand for its products across Europe and Asia. In the press release, the company’s founder and CEO, Michael Stemmle said, “This funding will finance our international expansion and help strengthen our management team. It will also fuel our production of cutting-edge SaaS/cloud-based products that ensure our clients are ahead of the curve. It really is crunch time for the sector and this funding allows us to be at our best when our clients need us most.”

Founded in 1998, additiv offers a digital financial suite, robo advisor and advisor services, as well as digital mortgage tools. At FinovateEurope 2016, the company’s CEO and founder, Michael Stemmle, along with Adriano Lucatelli and Marc Sauter from Descartes Finance, demoed how Descartes Finance built a digital private banking platform on top of additiv’s digital finance suite. The technology enables self-directed investors to implement portfolios based on allocation and optimization methods.

additiv’s Digital Finance Suite (DFS) recently began powering Natwest’s new robo-advice offering, which launched for the U.K. savings and investment market. This comes after the company piloted similar projects with Coutts, a private bank, and RBS Group. We featured the company earlier this year in our roundup of top business-to-business wealth tech players.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

PayU Investment in Kreditech Marks Largest Funding for a German Fintech

PayU Investment in Kreditech Marks Largest Funding for a German Fintech
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Fundings, Kreditech

In a funding round led by online payment service provider, PayU, Germany’s Kreditech has raised $120 million (€110 million). The investment is the largest equity investment in a German fintech company to date. Kreditech CEO Alexander Graubner-Müller said his company was looking forward to bringing “point-of-sale finance” to markets where “reliable credit risk assessment” is lacking. Graubner-Müller added “Teaming up with PayU provides underbanked customers new possibilities and supports our mission of providing financial freedom through technology.”

In addition the record-setting nature of the funding, the partnership between Kreditech and PayU also represents what the company called in a press release: “the first such strategic cooperation pact between a payment service provider and a technology driven consumer finance company.” Pointing to its commitment to bring credit and financial services to the underbanked, PayU CEO Laurent le Moal said his company’s “substantial investment” in Kreditech will “help to bring pioneering machine learning and AI technology to the many high growth markets around the world that need better access to financial services.”

Pictured (left to right): Co-founders Sebastian Diemer and Alexander Graubner-Müller demonstrating Kreditech’s platform at FinovateSpring 2014.

This week’s funding adds to the $10.4 million Kreditech raised in a round led by Japan-based Rakuten last December. With total capital of more than $280 million, the Hamburg-based online lender has earned a valuation of between $325 million and $540 million, according to an estimate in TechCrunch.

Kreditech has processed more than four million loan applications via its subsidiaries, leveraging its API-driven, lending-as-a-service approach to make it easy for partners to integrate and custom-fit a variety of consumer finance solutions. These include loan application and credit risk management products, e-signature and customer service, loan refinancing, processing, and collections. The company is active in more than five markets around the world – including Russia, Mexico, Spain, and Poland, where Kreditech and PayU recently completed an $11 million (€10 million), 12-month pilot program.

Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, Kreditech demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2014. Named to H2 Ventures and KPMG’s Fintech 100 in 2016, the company added a pair of new board members last month: former Vanquis Bank CEO Michael Lenora and OneSavings Bank CEO Andy Golding.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Bitbond Gains $5.4 Million Debt Commitment and Undisclosed Equity Investment

Bitbond Gains $5.4 Million Debt Commitment and Undisclosed Equity Investment
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Bitbond, Funding

Peer-to-peer small business financing platform Bitbond announced today it has received a debt commitment from Obotritia Capital, which has agreed to fund $5.4 million worth of loans on its platform. Obotritia has also invested an undisclosed amount of equity in Bitbond, whose current funding now totals more than $2.14 million.

Headquartered in Germany, Bitbond offers small businesses across the globe fast access to working capital. It does so by connecting small business owners with individual and institutional investors. Because it leverages the blockchain, Bitbond sends cross-border payments to merchants quickly and inexpensively. Since it was founded in 2013, Bitbond has originated 1,700 loans to small businesses in 120 countries.

Above: Bitbond’s Radko Albrecht (CEO & Founder) and Jarek Nowotka (CTO) debut the company’s automated SME scoring engine at FinovateFall 2016

At FinovateFall 2016, the company launched an automated SME scoring engine. “The main challenge about creating an international lending platform is credit scoring because data is different from one country to another,” said Bitbond CEO and founder Radko Albrecht in his recent FinovateFall demo. He added, “At Bitbond we have solved this and created the most international and most scalable SME scoring mechanism.” The tool offers a universal, automated scoring method that offers borrowers instant funding after their application is accepted. Because Bitbond requires less manual involvement than traditional underwriting methods, it also has the advantage of scalability.

Earlier this year, Bitbond partnered with blockchain remittance service Bitpesa to improve access to working capital for small businesses in Africa. Last fall, the company received its BaFin license, a certification that allows it to conduct asset brokerage on its platform independent of banks.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

FinDEVr Alum Symbiont Scores Funding from China’s Hundsun Technologies

FinDEVr Alum Symbiont Scores Funding from China’s Hundsun Technologies
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Fundings, Symbiont

The amount of the investment was undisclosed. But blockchain startup and smart contracts specialist, Symbiont has picked up funding from China-based Hundsun Technologies. The investment in Symbiont is the first in the U.S. for the financial services software provider and the company, which is partly-owned by Alibaba founder, Jack Ma, will also add an observer to Symbiont’s board of directors. Symbiont CEO Mark Smith referred to the investment as a “clear vote of confidence for Symbiont” and called Hundsun Technologies a “strong partner in Asia.”

Symbiont’s innovation is a smart contracts platform that enables FIs to develop applications based on distributed ledger technology. Current use cases enabling the issuance, trading, and processing of corporate bonds, syndicated loans, and other low-liquidity financial instruments. Guan Xiaolan, executive president of Hundsun highlighted the company’s “superior, mature, and highly differentiated DLT stack,” as well as the technology’s high level of security. “Its smart contracts have a proven ability to automate complex business logic, such as highly tailored employee compensation waterfalls for private companies,” he added.

Pictured: Symbiont CTO and co-founder Adam Krellenstein during his presentation at FinDEVr New York 2016.

It has been almost a year since the State of Delaware partnered with Symbiont in a project called The Delaware Block Initiative designed to make it easier for state government and businesses to leverage blockchain technology. In an update published as part of the Delaware law series last month, Andrea Tinianow of the Delaware Blockchain Initiative and Caitlin Long of Symbiont noted that the “first milestone of DBI’s roadmap” – deploying distributed ledger technology at the state’s public archives – had been achieved. Underscoring the relevance of this initial effort, the two wrote: “By being the first to adopt the technology, the State will maintain its leadership in corporate registry services.”

Also this spring, Symbiont added Yale University computer science professor, Dr. Zhong Shao, to its Technical Advisory Board, and partnered with commodity services specialist, Orebits, who will use Symbiont’s smart contract technology to further develop their eponymous commodity-backed digital assets. The first digital assets, called “orebits,” were made available on Symbiont’s platform in March.

Symbiont was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in New York. Adam Krellenstein, CTO and co-founder of the company, presented “Distributed Ledgers and Smart Contracts” at FinDEVr New York 2016.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Vera Announces $15 Million Strategic Investment from Hasso Plattner

Vera Announces $15 Million Strategic Investment from Hasso Plattner
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Fundings, Vera

Data security specialist  Vera announced a strategic investment of $15 million today. The funding was led by Hasso Plattner Ventures (HP-Ventures), and featured the participation of Amplify Partners, Battery Ventures, Clear Venture Partners, Leslie Ventures, and Sutter Hill Ventures. The company’s total capital is now more than $50 million. Ajay Arora, CEO and co-founder of Vera said the investment will help fuel expansion particularly in Europe where new regulations on data security, specifically the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), are pending.

GDPR was enacted just over a year ago by the European Parliament and Council in an effort to improve data security for individuals in the EU. The scheduled implementation date of the GDPR is less than a month away on May 25th and observers like Gartner are warning that less than half of companies are will be fully compliant by the end of 2018, much less the end of May. “The GDPR will affect not only EU-based organizations, but many data controllers and processors outside the EU as well,” Gartner research director, Bart Willemsen said. He added that both the threat of “hefty fines” and what he called “the increasingly empowered position of individual data subjects” are pressuring companies to do a better job of protecting personal data.

Pictured: Vera CEO and co-founder Ajay Arora demonstrating Vera Security at FinovateSpring 2016.

And this is where companies like Vera come in. Vera’s technology innovates by securing the data itself. From files and Word documents to images and video, Vera enables companies to control access and the ability to manipulate data after it has left its traditional perimeter of control. During the company’s live demonstration at FinovateSpring, Vera’s Grant Shirk used a single click to secure a word document and an Excel spreadsheet after attaching them to an email. In addition to quickly establishing a variety of access permissions, Vera’s technology also enables digital watermarking, restrictions on the ability to edit (including cut and paste), and provides auditing and tracking.

Underscoring Vera’s uniqueness as its first cybersecurity investment, HP-Ventures General Partner, Yair Re’em credited the company’s “incredible momentum and hypergrowth in markets large and small” as well as Vera’s ability to “help protect and control data after a breach has happened.” He said: “The crumbling state of enterprise security has clearly demonstrated the need for a fundamental paradigm shift in cybersecurity.” Chris Rust, Clear Venture Partners co-founder and General Partner, added that Vera was “the driving force behind a positive and profound shift away from perimeter-based security and towards a more flexible and reliable data-centric model.” Rust will join Vera’s board of directors as part of the strategic investment.

Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Vera demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2016. Earlier this year, the company launched its enterprise communications security solution, Vera for Mail. Last fall, Vera announced that Logica Capital Advisors had selected them to manage business information and internal collaboration files. The company has produced more than 4x revenue growth since launching publicly in 2015 and grown its Fortune 100 customer base by 5x. Vera won the 2017 SC Trust Award Winner for Best Cloud Computing Security in February and, in March, the company was named to CRN’s annual Security 100 list.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

$230 Million Raised by 20 Alums in Q1 2017

$230 Million Raised by 20 Alums in Q1 2017
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Fundings

The big story for fintech investment in the first few months of 2017 was uncertainty. Whether it was the upset election victory of Donald Trump in the U.S., or continued concerns in the aftermath of the Brexit vote in the U.K., it was clear that venture capital – like much of the rest of the world – was taking a wait-and-see approach to deploying capital in the fintech industry in the first quarter of this year.

While more upbeat on European investment trends, CB Insights took a more conservative tone toward funding to VC-backed fintechs in the U.S. and the world at large. The firm suggested that the Q1 2017 investment pace globally was off the 2016 mark by 18%, with the U.S. Q1 2017 pace off by 20%. (Europe, by contrast, was on pace to exceed 2016 by 57%.)

The Q1 funding slowdown was apparent in our review of alum funding for the first three months of the year. Finovate alums raised more than $230 million in the first quarter of 2017. The funding total is less than half that of the previous Q1, and out of line with recent $600 million+ first quarters. The number of alums funded was also on the low end, falling below the 23 alum mark from the first quarter of 2014.

That said, we would be remiss if we didn’t point out that SoFi, which became a FinDEVr alum in March, raised $500 million in funding in February. And while that keeps them from being included in – and dramatically boosting – our tally, it is reminder that fintech investors in the first quarter of 2017 may not have been as overcautious as the numbers suggest.

Previous Quarterly Comparisons

  • Q1 2016: $656 million raised by 32 alums
  • Q1 2015: $680 million raised by 29 alums
  • Q1 2014: $600 million raised by 23 alums

The biggest equity deal of the first quarter of 2017 was the $50 million raised by Kensho in February. Workfusion came in second, raising $35 million, and a trio of companies raised between $25 million and $20 million. The top 10 equity investment for Q1 2017 totaled more than $210 million, or more than 91% of the quarter’s total alum funding.

Top 10 Equity Investments

  1. Kensho: $50 million
  2. Workfusion: $35 million
  3. Currencycloud: $25 million
  4. Payfone: $23.5 million
  5. VATBox: $20 million
  6. NYMBUS: $16 million
  7. Qapital: $12 million
  8. Algomi: $10 million
  9. Dream Payments: $10 million
  10. blooom: $9.15 million

Here is our detailed alum funding report for Q1 2017.

January: More than $65 million raised by three alums

  • Dwolla: $6.85 million – post
  • Payfone: $23.5 million – post
  • Workfusion: $35 million – post

February: More than $107 million raised by 12 alums

  • Rippleshot: $2.6 million – post
  • AutoGravity: “double-digit million Euro investment” – post
  • Bitbond: $1.2 million – post
  • Blooom: $9.15 million – news
  • Clinc: $6 million – post
  • Kensho: $50 million – news
  • NYMBUS: $16 million – post
  • Pindrop Security: amount undisclosed – post
  • Qumram: $1.5 million – post
  • SecureKey: $800,000 – post
  • VATBox: $20 million – post
  • Venteny: undisclosed – news

March: More than $57 million raised by five alums

  • Algomi: $10 million – post
  • Currencycloud: $25 million – post
  • Dream Payments: $10 million – post
  • Qapital: $12 million – post
  • SWITCH: $400,000 – post

If you are a Finovate alum that raised money in the first quarter of 2016, and do not see your company listed, please drop us a note at research@finovate.com. We would love to share the good news! Funding received prior to becoming an alum not included.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Token Picks Up $18.5 Million to Help Banks Rise to Challenge of PSD2

Token Picks Up $18.5 Million to Help Banks Rise to Challenge of PSD2
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Fundings, Token

With an investment of $15.7 million from Octopus Ventures, EQT Ventures, and OP Financial Group, open bank platform innovator Token has successfully completed its Series A financing. “Securing the backing from such world-class investors allows us to grow and execute faster in our mission to reinvent the world’s payment systems by providing common, secure access to all banks and a modern, bank-centric payment ecosystem,” Token founder and CEO Steve Kirsch said. The total raised in the Series A reached $18.5 million.

Token is leveraging its open banking platform to give financial institutions the ability to fully participate in the digitization of finance. Calling the company’s technology, “a true game-changer in the world of banking and financial services,” EQT Ventures partner and Token board member Andreas Thorstensson said: “Through a secure API, they are creating an open banking ecosystem, which creates possibilities for new revenue streams for its customers and a better user experience for consumers.

Pictured (left to right): Stefan Weiss (Head of APIs and Open Platforms at Fidor) and Marten Nelson (VP, Marketing, Token) demonstrating Token’s technology at FinovateEurope 2017.

In the company’s live demonstration at FinovateEurope earlier this year, Token co-founder and VP of Marketing Marten Nelson emphasized the relative speed and low cost of using Token as a PSD2 compliance solution. “It eliminates security mass breaches, reduces fraud and, perhaps best of all, it paves the way for revenue,” Nelson added. Joining Nelson on stage was Stefan Weiss, Head of APIs and Open Platforms at Fidor Bank who noted, “At Fidor, we believe that PSD2 and open banking is not a threat to banks, it is an opportunity. An opportunity to stay relevant.”

With programmable money, Token has developed a technology that “can transform the way the world transacts,” according to Octopus Ventures partner Simon Andrews. Programmable money uses tokenization and cryptography to enable parties to take advantage of a “vastly greater range of parameters … when exchanging value.” And value is defined as more than just money. Writing at the Token blog, Nelson explained: “Far more than conventional money – time, contracts, expertise, goods, services, and more can all be traded.” For FIs, this offers not just greater security and verification standards for their transactions, but the ability to use more efficient self-validating transactions that would reduce costs for FIs, as well. “The potential applications for self-validating transactions conducted using programmable money are practically limitless,” he wrote.

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Token presented The Future of Payments Now at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2015. Earlier this month, the company announced a partnership with Finland-based OP Financial Group and, in January, Token teamed up with information technology consulting firm, VirtusaPolaris.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Signifyd Raises $56 Million to Fight eCommerce Chargebacks

Signifyd Raises $56 Million to Fight eCommerce Chargebacks
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, Signifyd

Signifyd launched in 2011 to mitigate e-commerce chargebacks and this week landed $56 million to continue the fight. The Series C round, which brings the company’s total capital to $87 million, was led by Bain Capital Ventures with contributions from Menlo Ventures, American Express, and other existing investors.

The company will use the funds to expand its team of engineers and fraud experts. Specifically, Signifyd plans to double its current engineering team over the course of the next year. Signifyd will also scale its fraud protection technology to serve enterprise merchants in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. This will continue an already impressive growth curve. The company now protects 5,000 merchants and in the past year experienced a 20x growth in transaction volume, 4.5x YOY revenue growth, and increased its workforce to more than 100. This 50% increase in employees from the year prior prompted the expansion to a new office to accommodate the growth.

Signifyd’s Guaranteed Fraud Protection, which it debuted at FinovateSpring 2013, helps shift fraud liability away from online retailers by offering a 100% guarantee against fraud or chargebacks on every order. The company stands behind its technology by reimbursing clients for “any fraudulent transactions that slip through the cracks.” Enabling technologies such as machine learning and AI offer a scalable approach that can be implemented with large, enterprise retailers.

Among Signifyd’s recent partnerships are Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Magento, Accertify, and ThreatMetrix. The company has received multiple honors recently, including multiple wins in the American Business Awards earlier this week. It has also been recognized by Entrepreneur, Forbes, and Bloomberg, and has been named one of the Bay Area’s Best Places to Work by the San Francisco Business Times and Silicon Valley Business Journal.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

FinDEVr Alum Quovo Raises $10 Million

FinDEVr Alum Quovo Raises $10 Million
By Julie Muhn (@julieschicktanz) Posted on
Categories: Funding, Quovo

Financial data provider Quovo landed some serious cash last week in a Series B funding round. The New York-based company received $10 million from Napier Park Global Capital and F-Prime Capital Partners, who led the round. They were joined by existing investors, FinTech Collective and Long Light Capital. The company now boasts $15.2 million in total funding.

Lowell Putnam, CEO and co-founder of Quovo said that the capital will enable the company further its “mission to help firms build strong, data-driven client relationships, ” and that it will “enable [it] to build upon [its] success and help anyone trying to innovate or disrupt within financial services.”

Quovo will use the investment to “accelerate the growth of its suite of data analytics offerings,” which include Quovo Connect, a module that enables companies to pull transaction data from a user’s financial accounts. Quovo also offers a Bank Authentication API, which the company’s CTO & Co-Founder, Michael Del Monte, along with Stephen Sikes, Head of Strategy for SoFi Wealth, showcased at FinDEVr New York. SoFi, along with Finovate alums Wealthfront and Betterment leverage Quovo’s Authentication API to offer end users a smooth way to authenticate their financial accounts securely.

Stephen Sikes, Head of Strategy for SoFi Wealth (left) and Michael Del Monte, Quovo CTO & Co-Founder (right)

Founded in 2010, Quovo has presented at FinDEVr New York 2016 and FinDEVr New York 2017, where it was awarded Favorite FinDEVr Alum. Earlier this year, the company announced that its Bank Authentication API now covers 215 financial institutions, a growth of 10x since it was launched in November 2016.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Narrative Science Raises $11 Million Series E

Narrative Science Raises $11 Million Series E
By David Penn Posted on
Categories: Funding, Narrative Science

NarrativeScience_homepage_April2017

In a round co-led by Sapphire Ventures and Jump Capital, advanced natural-language generation technology innovator Narrative Science has raised $11 million. The Series E round takes the company’s total funding to more than $40 million. Quoted in Crain’s Chicago Business, Sapphire Ventures partner Jai Das wasted few words in explaining Narrative Science’s edge. “People like to read,” Das said. In other words, it’s all about the Advanced NLG.

Narrative Science specializes in using advanced natural-language generation technology to turn ordinary numeric and symbolic data and visualizations into what the company calls “intelligent narratives.” These narratives express in language indistinguishable from that of a human author all the relevant insights and context from the chosen data. This data can take a variety of forms, including business intelligence reports, customer communications, and regulatory filings – any information that is based on quantifiable data can be turned into an intelligent narrative. “People who don’t have skill with spreadsheets, people who might not have skills with visualizations … they can still get to the insights within that data,” Kris Hammon, Narrative Science Chief Scientist explained during the company’s demo at FinovateFall.

Founded in 2010 and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, Narrative Science demonstrated its Quill Financial solution at FinovateFall 2013. The company, which celebrated its seventh anniversary in April, has been on a partnership spree in recent months. A deal with Sisense in February will put Narrative Science’s Narratives for Business Intelligence API to work for the company’s business intelligence technology, Sisense Everywhere. Also in February, Narrative Science partnered with FactSet to integrate automated portfolio commentary within FactSet’s analytics and client reporting platform. We featured Narrative Science in our look at artificial intelligence in fintech back at the beginning of the year. Stuart Frankel is CEO.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook