Streetbees Gets $40m Funds, Plans 100+ Hires

In London, mobile-based customer insights firm Streetbees has raised $40m in a Series B round of funding, which it will use to accelerate development of its platform, and increase headcount from 100 to 230 during the next twelve months.

Streetbees, which also has offices in Lisbon and North America, combines artificial intelligence and geolocation technology to collect data from more than 3.5 million users (or 'bees') across 190 countries, who share moments from their daily lives through videos, photos and text using a chat-style app. The firm analyses what the bees do and why using natural language processing technology, and predicts what they will do next. In addition, it recently released a public facing 'Mood of the World' platform, providing a real time view of consumer emotion across 50 markets, derived from open text.

Adding to previous funding, this latest round has been led by venture capital firm Lakestar, with participation from Latitude, Atomico, GMG Ventures and Octopus. The Series B round will also fund data acquisition across a variety of new verticals including media and entertainment, and finance. Streetbees CEO Tugce Bulut (pictured) comments: 'With this round of funding, we will accelerate the creation of a searchable world where brands can finally decipher human behaviour and decode the real reasons why consumers do what they do'.

For a detailed discussion of what Streetbees does, see MrWeb's interview with Tugce in May this year.

Web site: www.streetbees.com .