Realeyes, a tech company which uses artificial intelligence to read emotions, today announced it has raised $16.2 million in growth funding. The company says it will use the funding to grow its AI team and to drive further development of its emotional tech platform.
The funding round is the biggest held by Realeyes so far and was led by previous investor Draper Esprit, which was joined by Karma Ventures and Harbert European Growth Capital. Realeyes says the money will also enable it to expand into industries beyond advertising, including healthcare and education among others.
Realeyes’ platform uses webcams to record individuals’ facial expressions while watching an ad, analyse the emotional reactions viewers have to the ad using AI-based software. While the tech is not yet able to guarantee an accurate read of any individual’s emotional response, when tested across a large enough audience Realeyes says the tech can pick out trends in where audiences are engaged with an ad, and where engagement drops off.
The London-based company lists Mars, Coca-Cola, Ipsos, Publicis, Turner, Teads and Oath among its customers, and claims to have grown its revenue by 932 percent over the past four years. While the company is looking to grow beyond its ad tech offering, CEO Mihkel Jäätma said marketing will remain the company’s focus.
“This investment will help us to expand our incredible team and further develop our pioneering emotion platform, so we can continue to be the company that leads from the front in the martech space,” said Jäätma. “Emotions matter in marketing. They drive our decisions and behaviour, so creating reliable, ground-breaking software that can track emotions at scale will help marketers make smarter decisions on how best to engage their consumers.”
