The Turkish marketing platform Insider, supported by artificial intelligence, announced the attraction of investment funds in the amount of $105 million following the results of the financing round.
Source: Pixabay.com
Also, according to the results of this round, the platform was valued at almost $2 billion. This result is an illustrative example of the fact that companies that focus on artificial intelligence in their activities are resisting the global technological downturn.
Insider was founded in 2012 in Istanbul. The founders of the company are six Turkish entrepreneurs. The firm received funding from the Qatar Investment Authority and Esas, which is based in Istanbul.
Insider’s chief executive officer and co-founder Hande Chilingir said at the Qatar Economic Forum that the company’s valuation is growing amid a global decline in economic multipliers.
The active development of artificial intelligence has stopped the process of large-scale reduction of venture financing. This trend started after OpenAI Inc. released its chatbot ChatGPT at the end of last year. Against the background of a visual demonstration of the capabilities of AI, there was a surge of interest in advanced technology. Ashton Kutcher, a Hollywood actor and venture capitalist, earlier in May announced the creation of a new artificial intelligence fund.
Chilingir says that it is very problematic for technology companies to cope with the task of attracting new financing, but at the same time, effective firms with potential do not face such difficulties.
In March last year, Insider managed to attract investment funds in the amount of $121 million following the results of the Series D financing round. Seven investors took part in this process. Then the company was valued at $1.22 billion.
Chilingir said that the firm will direct the new financing to expand the scope of its activities and expects one or two acquisitions in the American and European markets to improve its technologies. The company is also exploring the prospects for the first public offering of shares in 2025 or 2026.
Earlier this year, Insider acquired Istanbul-based MindBehind, a conversational commerce and messaging platform. There is no information about the value of this transaction. As of February of this year, the company’s sales in North America increased by 280% year-on-year. The growth of the indicator was recorded after attracting new customers, including Samsung.
After two boom years in 2021 and 2022, the level of investment in Turkey’s technology sector showed a sharp drop between January and March this year. This decline was the reason for the minimum amount of financing for the industry in ten quarters. In the first quarter of this year, Turkish startups received investment financing in the amount of $56 million. The same figure for the same period last year amounted to $1.27 billion.
The Insider platform uses artificial intelligence as a tool for predicting changes in consumer behavior. Currently, the company has more than 1,200 customers in 28 countries, including Singapore Airlines, Toyota Motor Corp., and Vodafone Group Plc.
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