Barcelona AI Startup Inbenta To Close €10 Million Series B

Inbenta offers support features to businesses that want to make search better and smarter on their website. They do this through semantic search and artificial intelligence, and according to themselves decrease support costs and increase conversion rates.

They will soon close a B-round between €9 and €11 million from American VC’s, Chilean Inversur, and Amerigo Venture Fund backed by Telefonica. The so far unknown American fund will account for 70 percent of the investment, according to MarketWatch.

The company expects to grow up to 60 percent in 2016, and exceed €7 million in turnover.

Inbenta has been around for a while, founded back in 2005 by Jordi Torras.

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Keep on growing

Growth is the key word when talking about Inbenta. They closed their A-series of 1.5 million in 2014, led by the Chilean VC Inversur, and have skyrocketed ever since.

In 2015 they grew 67 percent, according to MarketWatch, with a turnover of €4.6 million.

The latest round of funding is meant to enable Inbenta to grow further, mainly in Japan, The US and in Europe. They will also invest more in their R&D department.

The final closing of this last round is supposed to happen in a couple of months.

Escaping Spain

One condition of the latest funding, is that the company moves their tax office to San Francisco, where Inbenta has had an office for the last four years.

The headquarter here in Barcelona, will therefore turn into merely a branch of the “new” American company in California.

Inbenta currently has offices in Barcelona, Amsterdam, Toulouse, Sao Paulo, Santiago and in San Francisco, and are looking at options to expand to new countries.

In terms of service, the company operates in 20 languages and have a broad specter of well-known clients, such as Ticketmaster, Groupon, Burger King, BBVA and the list goes on.

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