Affectiva, a Waltham, MA-based developer of emotion measurement technologies, has secured $12m in Series C financing.
Backers include Horizons Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) Digital Growth Fund, as well as existing investors (WPP, Myrian Capital and the Peder Wallenberg Charitable Trust, represented by Lingfield AB).
Founded in 2009 as an MIT spin-off by professor Rosalind W. Picard, Sc.D. and research scientist Rana el Kaliouby, Ph.D., and led by CEO David Berman, Affectiva has commercialized emotion technologies, including Affdex™, an automated facial coding platform (using a webcam) and Q Sensor™, a wearable biometric sensor.
The company intends to use the funding to accelerate:
– Affdex development of emotional insights for all forms of online video content, including advertisements, trailers, TV shows and movies, and
– Q Sensor development, which is already in use by hundreds of universities and corporations, to collect data and develop meaningful insights for areas such as sleep, anxiety, and stress.
In conjunction with the financing, Frank Meehan at Horizons Ventures will join Affectiva’s board of directors; Mary Meeker, a partner at KPCB, will join as an observer.
FinSMEs
07/08/2012