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What an amazing week we’ve had here at Signal AI. We’ve announced our Series C funding round – an incredible moment and milestone for the business – followed by some fantastic coverage of our achievements in the likes of Techcrunch, CityAM, VentureBeat, and PRWeek.
I am always keen to point out to my team that whilst funding is certainly a cause for celebration, it’s definitely not an endgame in and of itself. Quite the opposite it brings a reinvigorated sense of the hard work necessary and the graft yet to be done. And it provides the opportunity to reinvest in the company, people, product and technology and gives you a platform from which to springboard your vision.
So, with the ink dry on the funding agreement and 2020 just around the corner, we’re finding ourselves both reflecting on our journey so far and looking to the future. Anticipating what will come next and finalising our ongoing mission, vision, and strategy. This is a great opportunity to take a moment to reflect and both appreciate the progress that’s been made so far, as well as contemplate the sort of business we want to build for the future.
Rather than putting our feet up, we will be hitting the ground running to further cement our position as a market leader and cross-sector technology innovator. Focusing on the development of Signal AI’s product offering and our continued expansion into North America and APAC. Not only to reinforce our existing success, but to scale up our international operations and continue the exponential growth we have experienced thus far.
As we look to the future and the next phase of growth for Signal AI, we can contemplate what Series C funding means for us and how we can capitalise upon it to define and implement our vision.
How we got here
It feels like just yesterday that Miguel and I were in the garage; with a vision of using AI to transform the way business leaders make decisions and the technological aptitude to make it happen. Our focus is to bring together the disparate, diverse datasets that we aggregate, to apply cutting-edge machine learning technology, and to productise that in a way that delivers value for our customers.
Since those days in the garage we’ve received incredible support, initially from Frontline Ventures who led our Seed round in 2014 alongside LocalGlobe and Samos Investments. With MMC Ventures and Hearst Ventures joining the party for Series A. And now, it’s been just over a year since our July 2018 Series B funding announcement. This penultimate funding round brought us to Alan Hudson and David Pemsel at The Guardian Media Group, who have been an integral part of our support system, helping us leverage all the amazing assets that The Guardian have.
And here we are again, announcing our Series C funding…
For this round we were happy to bring Redline Capital onboard, due to the depth of their expertise in B2B SaaS businesses and their global outlook. They believe in building global leaders- scaling into America and beyond. We recognised a great cultural fit between our organisation and theirs, but also a feeling that they were going to be straightforward, pragmatic, value add investors.
This funding comes after yet another period of explosive growth for Signal AI. Revenue has more than doubled every year for the last 3 years and our customer base has more than doubled in the last 12 months alone. And with more than 150 employees worldwide in London, New York and Hong Kong, we will utilise this investment to continue to expand our global footprint – maturing as a business.
What AI means to us
Over the past year, Signal AI has disrupted established players in the PR and Comms industry, sanity-tested and proved viable new ways businesses can use our tech, and we have set our sights on redefining Artificial Intelligence (AI). As a business with machine learning at its core, it’s imperative for us to define exactly what AI means to us and how the machine learning aspect of our business impacts our customers directly. We believe – as we head into a new decade and phase of growth – that we are pioneers at the forefront of Augmented Intelligence.
There are three primary opportunities the funding will provide us with. Firstly, it will allow us to continue to invest in our core vision and therefore the core underlying platform of the business: the technology, the data, and the ability to productise those insights into value.
Secondly, it’s about scale and helping us make sure that we can support and provide services to our customers in a global context. With international clients such as HSBC, Centrica and Deloitte, we’ve managed to do something really global and serve them in a 24/7 context. This funding will accelerate our rapid growth in the US and cement our recent launch in the APAC market, allowing us to serve many more cross-region clients.
And thirdly, it allows us to take the path of realising our vision; actually being able to add value to our customers in new and innovative ways. What we mean by that, is that the AI technology that we initially applied to news sources and public data for PR and Comms focused media monitoring, can be used to spot themes, trends, risks, and opportunities for business that help their leaders to make better decisions (Techcrunch).
The team and I can’t wait to get stuck into the coming challenges and opportunities the next year will bring. Making time to reflect on how far we have come and the exciting work yet to be done.
Find out more about Signal AI here or request a personalised demo to see how our AI-powered media monitoring, reputation management and market intelligence platform can enhance your workflow.