A group of American and Chinese investors enables Dashmote to accelerate their global growth
AMSTERDAM - The AI technology company Dashmote has secured €2.5 million euro (US$2.8 million) in funding from a group of American and Chinese investors. Such resources will kickstart a long term plan that will allow the Amsterdam-based scale-up to bring its data and image analytics solutions for enterprises to new and larger venues. The funding round includes investors from SP Investment Associates (SPIA), Three Curve Capital (TCC) and Gaomei Yunjing Investments.
Retrieving data from the visual web
Dashmote’s mission is to lead people and companies through an A.I. and data-driven world. Every day, around 3 billion images are uploaded to the internet. Dashmote’s artificial intelligence technology is capable of analysing these images and gain valuable insights. With its SaaS-solution, Dashmote is already helping companies such as Heineken, Coca Cola, Unilever, and L'Oreal to understand their audience and the market they move into.
Large companies that operate in consumer electronics, food and beverage, and cosmetics use Dashmote to sharpen their marketing efforts and upsell capabilities. Data analysis is used to discover market trends, operate an effective segmentation of the offer, and measure the audience engagement and sentiment.
With the new funding, Dashmote heads towards a bright future. "We are very pleased with the international group of investors. They are a great fit to our ambition to solidify our position in existing markets and to roll out to new markets," said Dennis Tan, CEO and co-founder of Dashmote. "With SPIA and Three Curve Capital, we not only receive funds to grow our business but we will also benefit from their experience as venture and growth investors and their vast network. It is important for us that Gaomei also joined this round, considering our current footprint and plans in the Chinese market."
Experienced, international investors
For Gaomei, a Chinese VC, this is the first investment outside their home country of China. "Dennis and Stefan have proven even before we came along that they had a clear vision on how to enter Asian markets,” said Ning Gu, founder and general partner at Gaomei. "They have done so successfully with their own strategy of local culture and approach with an international push." Both SPIA and TCC have deep networks in the U.S., Europe and Asia and bring decades of experience in scaling fast-growing companies, including those with global ambitions similar to Dashmote’s.
Scaling up and expanding
Dashmote is already profitable and will use the funding exclusively to rapidly scale up. The company will double the number of employees from the current 45 to 90. The New York and Shanghai offices will increase in size, and opening of new offices in the U.S. and Asia are foreseen for the near future.
The company will also use the fresh capital to expand its product portfolio. Dashmote's AI technology is now predominantly serving image analytics for trend, brand, and location intelligence services. In the near future, though, the company wants to unlock information in online video material - another potentially inexhaustible source of insights for companies. Together with a new way to visualize the gathered information, this will offer companies even more possibilities to understand data and leverage it for marketing, strategy and sales purposes.
About Dashmote
Dashmote was founded in 2014 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands by Dennis Tan (CEO), Matthäus Schreder (CPO), and Stefan Tan (CFO). Together they set out on a mission to lead people and companies through an A.I. and data-driven world. The company headquarters is in Amsterdam and has offices in New York, Vienna, and Shanghai.