Funds for Fast-Growing i-Genie

In Atlanta, GA, AI-powered consumer insights platform i-Genie has announced the raising of $7.5m in Series A funding. The firm, which was founded by former Unilever execs Stan Sthanunathan and Paul van Gendt, and recent appointed Trevor Sumner as CEO, has grown rapidly to more than forty people.

i-Genie now delivers insights across more than 25 countries, supporting 20 plus languages with native NLP, and offering enterprise-ready integrations. Presto, its agentic insights layer, delivers instant, data-backed consumer insights by allowing users to ask complex, natural-language questions and receive real-time answers across markets, categories, and integrated customer datasets.

Sumner (pictured) joins with expertise in marketing tech, AI and SaaS scaling and enterprise technology. He worked in Product Marketing for a number of software firms before co-founding marketing tech platform LocalVox in 2010, helping to lead it for six years. Later he was CEO of interactive in-store tech firm Perch, for five years until 2022, then moving to spend two years as Head of AI and Data Platform Products at Raydiant - in recent years he has combined roles with being a mentor and board advisor at a number of firms.

'Consumer insights are at a moment of massive disruption,' says Sthanunathan. 'Surveys have dominated for decades, but they are too slow, too biased, and too narrow. AI and NLP allow us to capture signals in real time and at scale. With Trevor at the helm, I am more excited than ever to see i-Genie lead this transformation, and I remain deeply engaged as we reshape the category together.'

Sthanunathan was insights EVP at Unilever, while Gendt ran the People Data Center. The funding round was led by Mudita Ventures and Silicon Road Ventures, with participation from retail and marketing tech investors Deborah Weinswig, Todd E. Benson and Vine Stone Ventures.

Home page: www.i-genie.ai .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.