21.01.2016, 07:25
AXA Strategic Ventures invests in deep machine learning technology poised to transform the Internet of Things
OREANDA-NEWS. AXA Strategic Ventures (AXA SV), a global €230 million venture capital fund, announces today it is leading a $11 million Series A funding round for Neura.
Neura’s technology can be utilized to enable smarter healthcare, cars, music services, homes and much more. The service lets people get to an unprecedented level of technology personalization, by computing a constantly updated portrait of user behavior patterns. Simply put, Neura enriches apps and devices with insights about users’ past and present actions, as well as calculated predictions about the next thing they’re going to do.
This Series A round, co-led by AXA Strategic Ventures and Pitango Venture Capital and with participation from Liberty Israel Venture Fund and Lenovo Group, will enable Neura to further realize its technological and business potential. Coinciding with the first open release of Neura development framework, designed to let developers personalize and contextualize their products, the new capital will be used to expand Neura’s business reach and make the service ubiquitous.
"Neura is poised to deliver on the promise of IoT – improving our quality of life through smart technology. They do this with a singular and unique focus on the user. The result will allow various industries, including insurance, to better serve users at the time of need in the most convenient and transparent method possible,” said Manish Agarwal, General Partner at AXA Strategic Ventures in New York. “We believe Neura's approach is disruptive and is going to change the way we use and interact with data and devices on a daily basis in the future."
“Currently users’ data are not fully exploited in their interest”, stated Neura’s CEO Gilad Meiri. “The actual generators of data, the users, have no say in what impact this data has on their life. Customer data is bought and sold on the common market and the lack of transparency in the current system is troubling. We have built our platform on a foundation of transparency and a commitment to making personal data work for the sake of users. We are building the engine that can make smart technology smarter without sacrificing the trust of our users”.
This Investment in Neura completes the recent four investments done over the second half of 2015 in the U.S.:
• Bee is building the bank of the future:a mobile-first, in-person bank for all Americans.
• PriceMethod is a predictive analytics company that provides technology to enable accommodations marketplaces and property owners to operate more efficiently through optimized, automated and now guaranteed pricing.
• GoldBean provides advice, education and low-cost trading for financial beginners. By analyzing members’ actual spending, they create customized portfolios featuring successful companies and brands that users love, know and buy.
• CoPromote has built the world’s largest programmatic influencer marketing platform with over 800,000 content creators reaching more than 1.6 billion people a month.
"AXA is now accelerating its investment in innovative and disruptive start-ups. I believe it is critical in order for us to utilize the technology and data revolution as an opportunity to grow faster and to continue to improve the interactions with our clients”, said Francois Robinet, Managing Partner, AXA Strategic Ventures. “The start-ups on which we have invested over 2015 are all relevant for us not only as investment but because of what we can develop together with them”.
These five companies join AXA SV’s portfolio, which also includes investments in PolicyGenius, Limelight Health, VolunteerSpot in the U.S. and Climate Secure, Easy Proprietaires, Evercontact, Flyr, Fundshop, Widmee, Netheos, Particeep and Art2M in Europe.
About AXA Strategic Ventures
AXA Strategic Ventures is a €230M venture capital fund dedicated to emerging strategic innovations in insurance and financial services. AXA Strategic Ventures invests in startups via seed funding and also provides venture capital for growth companies. The fund currently has four offices: San Francisco, New York, London, and Paris and will open later 2016 in Hong Kong.
ABOUT THE AXA GROUP
The AXA Group is a worldwide leader in insurance and asset management, with 161,000 employees serving 103 million clients in 59 countries. In 2014, IFRS revenues amounted to Euro 92.0 billion and IFRS underlying earnings to Euro 5.1 billion. AXA had Euro 1,277 billion in assets under management as of December 31, 2014. The AXA ordinary share is listed on compartment A of Euronext Paris under the ticker symbol CS (ISN FR 0000120628 – Bloomberg: CS FP – Reuters: AXAF.PA). AXA’s American Depository Share is also quoted on the OTC QX platform under the ticker symbol AXAHY. The AXA Group is included in the main international SRI indexes, such as Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) and FTSE4GOOD. It is a founding member of the UN Environment Programme’s Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) Principles for Sustainable Insurance and a signatory of the UN Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI).
Neura’s technology can be utilized to enable smarter healthcare, cars, music services, homes and much more. The service lets people get to an unprecedented level of technology personalization, by computing a constantly updated portrait of user behavior patterns. Simply put, Neura enriches apps and devices with insights about users’ past and present actions, as well as calculated predictions about the next thing they’re going to do.
This Series A round, co-led by AXA Strategic Ventures and Pitango Venture Capital and with participation from Liberty Israel Venture Fund and Lenovo Group, will enable Neura to further realize its technological and business potential. Coinciding with the first open release of Neura development framework, designed to let developers personalize and contextualize their products, the new capital will be used to expand Neura’s business reach and make the service ubiquitous.
"Neura is poised to deliver on the promise of IoT – improving our quality of life through smart technology. They do this with a singular and unique focus on the user. The result will allow various industries, including insurance, to better serve users at the time of need in the most convenient and transparent method possible,” said Manish Agarwal, General Partner at AXA Strategic Ventures in New York. “We believe Neura's approach is disruptive and is going to change the way we use and interact with data and devices on a daily basis in the future."
“Currently users’ data are not fully exploited in their interest”, stated Neura’s CEO Gilad Meiri. “The actual generators of data, the users, have no say in what impact this data has on their life. Customer data is bought and sold on the common market and the lack of transparency in the current system is troubling. We have built our platform on a foundation of transparency and a commitment to making personal data work for the sake of users. We are building the engine that can make smart technology smarter without sacrificing the trust of our users”.
This Investment in Neura completes the recent four investments done over the second half of 2015 in the U.S.:
• Bee is building the bank of the future:a mobile-first, in-person bank for all Americans.
• PriceMethod is a predictive analytics company that provides technology to enable accommodations marketplaces and property owners to operate more efficiently through optimized, automated and now guaranteed pricing.
• GoldBean provides advice, education and low-cost trading for financial beginners. By analyzing members’ actual spending, they create customized portfolios featuring successful companies and brands that users love, know and buy.
• CoPromote has built the world’s largest programmatic influencer marketing platform with over 800,000 content creators reaching more than 1.6 billion people a month.
"AXA is now accelerating its investment in innovative and disruptive start-ups. I believe it is critical in order for us to utilize the technology and data revolution as an opportunity to grow faster and to continue to improve the interactions with our clients”, said Francois Robinet, Managing Partner, AXA Strategic Ventures. “The start-ups on which we have invested over 2015 are all relevant for us not only as investment but because of what we can develop together with them”.
These five companies join AXA SV’s portfolio, which also includes investments in PolicyGenius, Limelight Health, VolunteerSpot in the U.S. and Climate Secure, Easy Proprietaires, Evercontact, Flyr, Fundshop, Widmee, Netheos, Particeep and Art2M in Europe.
About AXA Strategic Ventures
AXA Strategic Ventures is a €230M venture capital fund dedicated to emerging strategic innovations in insurance and financial services. AXA Strategic Ventures invests in startups via seed funding and also provides venture capital for growth companies. The fund currently has four offices: San Francisco, New York, London, and Paris and will open later 2016 in Hong Kong.
ABOUT THE AXA GROUP
The AXA Group is a worldwide leader in insurance and asset management, with 161,000 employees serving 103 million clients in 59 countries. In 2014, IFRS revenues amounted to Euro 92.0 billion and IFRS underlying earnings to Euro 5.1 billion. AXA had Euro 1,277 billion in assets under management as of December 31, 2014. The AXA ordinary share is listed on compartment A of Euronext Paris under the ticker symbol CS (ISN FR 0000120628 – Bloomberg: CS FP – Reuters: AXAF.PA). AXA’s American Depository Share is also quoted on the OTC QX platform under the ticker symbol AXAHY. The AXA Group is included in the main international SRI indexes, such as Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) and FTSE4GOOD. It is a founding member of the UN Environment Programme’s Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) Principles for Sustainable Insurance and a signatory of the UN Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI).
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