Realeyes raises $16.2m in growth funding

The investment will be used to continue innovating its emotion tech platform, grow its AI team and to expand into other sectors including healthcare, robotics and education.

The company is one of the fastest-growing tech businesses in the UK  with revenue increasing 932% in four years.

With the investment comes some senior appointments and Barry Coleman joins from LootCrate as its chief operating officer, while behavioural computing academic at Imperial College London, Professor Maja Pantic – who has been on the Realeyes Advisory Board for more than four years – will take on a more hands-on role.

Both Coleman and Pantic will report to CEO Mihkel Jäätma.

Jäätma  said: “These are exciting times – not just for Realeyes, but the marketing industry as a whole. We’re only starting to get a tantalising glimpse at the impact and disruption that AI can bring to a number of different sectors, including the creative industries.

“This investment will help us to expand our team and further develop our emotion platform, so we can continue to lead from the front in the martech space. Emotions matter in marketing. They drive our decisions and behaviour, so creating software that can track emotions at scale will help marketers make smarter decisions on how best to engage their consumers.”

Mihkel added: “While we are focused on expanding our video advertising capabilities, our long-term strategy is to build a strong independent tech company that pioneers the use of effective computing across a number of different industries.

“With webcams now outnumbering human eyes and computers becoming ever better at reading human emotions – the boundless opportunities to build and develop smarter software solutions has never been greater. Having a top AI and effective computing team, supported by a world class academic like Maja, will help us grasp these opportunities sooner.”