Location data, for better or worse, continues to be a part of the bedrock of how apps are built. Now a startup developing AI market research based on that location data, Placer.ai, has quietly raised $75 million at an expanded valuation of nearly $1.5 billion, TechCrunch has learned.
The startup provides a wide range of location-based analytics to companies in verticals like retail, events and entertainment, CPG, retail estate, financial services and healthcare by combining AI with anonymised data that it sources from third party apps.
We first became aware of the funding by way of a Form D filed in July detailing Placer’s intentions to raise $75 million. We have confirmed with the company’s CEO and CFO that it has closed the full amount, with a new valuation of $1.45 billion, up nearly 50% since its last round, a $100 million Series C made at a $1 billion valuation.
The investment underscores the growing value of location data for businesses beyond the app publishers themselves. And, at a time when more people are aware of data protection around mobile apps, not least due to a growing number of data breaches, it also serves as a reminder of just how much data we generate just through modern life.
Placer’s analytics cover general trends like foot traffic at a particular location or for a particular store — factoids like Aldi currently ranking as the fastest-growing retailer based on visits — but also more detailed data about who buys what and and when, people’s demographic profiles and more.
Such methods are a little creepy, as some have noted, but also not totally uncommon. (Others that track location data include Foursquare, Esri and many others offer location analytics.)
Like other mobile analytics firms, the startup picks up data by way of an SDK that it installs with hundreds of app publishers; as well as through other third-party sources. It describes itself as a “privacy by design” business: all of the data it uses is anonymised before it comes to Placer, the company said.
The company declined to disclose specific participants in this latest fundraise except to note that existing backers participated. PitchBook notes that real estate investment firm GEM Realty Capital is also in this most recent round.
Overall, Placer has more than 50 investors — both firms and individuals — on its cap table. They include Josh Buckley (the former CEO of Product Hunt), WndrCo (Jeffrey Katzenberg’s investment firm), Lachy Groom, MMC Technology Ventures, Fifth Wall Ventures and Array Ventures, alongside J.M. Schapiro (CEO of Continental Realty Corp), Eliot Bencuya and Jeff Karsh of Tryperion Partners, Daniel Klein of Klein Enterprises/Sundeck Capital and Majestic Realty.
Numbers have been strong for the company. Placer’s CEO and co-founder Noam Ben-Zvi told TechCrunch in an interview that the company crossed an annual revenue run rate of $100 million in February, and it has grown 80% in the last year and expects to grow another 60% this year. It has also passed 4,300 customers (up from 1,000 in 2022 when it raised the $100 million). The list includes the likes of Sony, various city development organizations, Wegmans, and Century 21.
“What ties them together is that they all have a stake in the physical world,” he said.
The funding was raised based on inbound interest, CFO Dean Nese said. The plan will be to use the funding for business development and to add more features and data sets to the platform. It says it already provides users with “hundreds” of these data sets.
Placer was founded in 2018 by Ben-Zvi and fellow Israelis Zohar Bar-Yehuda (Data Scientist), Oded Fossfeld (CTO) and Ofir Lemel (CPO), and it was just two years later that the company faced what you might assume would be a death-knell for a location analytics company: the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic and the world turning away from physical gatherings. It turned out to be the opposite.
At an especially restricted time, Ben-Zvi said, “Our data provided a lot of visibility into what was working and what was not working.”
Having that foothold with customers meant that the company expanded its reach along with the world “reopening” for business.
While Placer has always used machine learning and inference to build more detailed profiles based on the data that they glean from apps, that has now also been a strong point with its end users, who have been given a green light to explore how to build more AI into their workflows.
“Customers want a holistic one stop-shop platform for market research,” he said. “They may ask themselves: Should I expand to this market? How are my competitors doing? What they want is all the underlying data that’s relevant, and all the aggregations and the tools on top. Analytics is a core ingredient.”