The round, which brought total funding to $182m to date on a $1.2 billion valuation, was led by Japan Post Capital Co. Ltd. and ACA Investments Pte Ltd., with participation from Globis Capital Partners Co., Ltd., Dentsu, Inc, and D.A.Consortium Inc. (Hakuhodo DY Group).
The company intends to use the funds to continue the expansion of its global engineering teams for mobile, backend and machine learning development, accelerating the growth in the U.S. and worldwide.
Led by Ken Suzuki, Co-Founder and CEO, SmartNews is a global news discovery company dedicated to delivering quality information to the people who need it by leverging its machine learning technology and relationships with over 400 U.S. publisher partners.
In September 2019, the company released its “News From All Sides” political slider, which leverages its AI to empower readers to see media coverage from different political perspectives. In October 2019, SmartNews announced SmartView First, a licensing option that benefits both the media ecosystem and readers themselves. This partnership program already includes more than 30 major content providers including BBC, Business Insider, Bloomberg, BuzzFeed, and Reuters.
The company has employees and offices in Tokyo, San Francisco, Palo Alto, Shanghai, and New York.
FinSMEs
18/11/2019