The funding will help the company – which currently employs 75 people in London and Lisbon – to develop its machine learning tech further as well as allowing it to expand in the US.

More than one million users – or ‘bees’ – across 150 countries use the chat-style Streetbees app to share moments from their daily lives via videos, photos and text, giving as much or as little information as they like. By applying advanced natural language processing technology to the results, Streetbees uncovers what they do, why they do it, and what drives them – and predicts what they may do next.

Tugce Bulut, CEO of Streetbees, said: "Human behaviour is too complex to standardise and understand with multiple-choice questions and automated analysis, but this is what most research groups dish up. International companies need deep insight into unique drivers of human behaviour to understand their customers and grow into new markets.

"Streetbees captures the detail within people’s lives at scale and analyses it, helping companies both understand the bigger picture and act like an innovative start-up that has intimate knowledge of local markets."

It is already working with clients including Unilever, PepsiCo, BBC World Wide and Vodafone.

Carolina Brochado, the Atomico Partner who led the investment, said, "With Streetbees, we have found the world’s first real-time technology-enabled customer insights platform – giving brands dynamic responses, from real customers, for a fraction of the cost and time taken by traditional incumbents. Streetbees has fundamentally changed the way international companies can engage and understand their global consumer base."