Expansion Funds for Privacy Specialist Private AI

In Canada, privacy-preserving machine learning and natural language processing tech firm Private AI has raised $8m in a Series A round of funding, which it will use to expand operations across Europe and enhance its products, including the launch of a self-service tool.

Founded by privacy and machine learning experts from the University of Toronto, Private AI uses artificial intelligence to detect, redact and replace more than 50 types of personally identifiable information (PII) in over 47 languages. The firm's solution is deployed within customers' own environment, meaning their data never has to be transferred to a third-party data processor, and it meets data protection regulations such as GDPR, CPRA and HIPAA.

New funding was led by BDC Capital, with participation from new investors GIT1K and Panda Angel Partners. Also included were a number of existing investors: Microsoft's Venture Fund (M12), Differential Ventures, Forum Ventures, Shasta Ventures and Parliament Angels made up of a group of early Twilio employees.

Patricia Thaine (pictured), co-founder and CEO of Private AI, comments: 'While it's important to a company to be able to leverage the value of their data, the protection of personal data is a core component of complying with most data protection regulations. That's why we enable replacing the original personal data with contextually correct synthetic data, allowing safe, compliant data analytics and modelling'.

Web site: www.private-ai.com .