Sean O'Sullivan's investment firm is pumping more cash into Dublin startup Aylien
The artificial intelligence company has raised €2 million in its latest funding round.
SEAN O’SULLIVAN’S INVESTMENT outfit, SOSV, has backed Dublin-based tech startup Aylien as part of a €2 million investment.
The company, launched in 2012, announced today that it had raised the money in a funding round led by the Atlantic Bridge University Fund, which invests in companies spun out of research work.
SOSV and Enterprise Ireland, both existing investors, also participated in the funding round. The firm raised nearly €600,000 from investors in early 2016.
Aylien said that the cash would be to “grow its Dublin team, secure its first hires in the United States, expand its product offering and make its cutting-edge technologies available to more global enterprises”. It said that 70 jobs will be created as a result of the investment.
The company produces software platforms that make sense of large amounts text. Its products are used in complex data analytics projects by large multinationals, such as Sony and Microsoft.
It has just launched a new product which allows users to easily create custom text analysis models. The text analysis platform is in private beta and will be rolled out over the coming months.
Aylien has also worked with academics in several of Ireland’s top universities including National University of Ireland Galway, University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin.
The firm currently has 18 staff, all based in Dublin, and had accumulated losses of around €687,000 at the end of 2016 according to its latest accounts.
Vision
SOSV, previously known as SOS Ventures, was established by Irish-American investor Sean O’Sullivan in 1993. The outfit has $300 million in assets under management and maintains a base in Cork.
Parsa Ghaffari, the CEO and founder of Aylien, said that the business is taking a “major step towards realising our product vision by introducing our latest offering, the text analysis platform”.
SOSV venture partner Cyril Ebersweiler said that Aylien “is at the forefront of its industry and has attracted a lot of attention over the past few months”.
“We are very happy to be joined by leading investors in which the company can count on to reach a global scale,” he said.
