Tel Aviv-Born Explorium Raised $31 Million in Series B To Further Grow
Fintech Middle East & Africa

Tel Aviv-Born Explorium Raised $31 Million in Series B To Further Grow

Explorium, founded in Tel Aviv by Maor Shlomo, Or Tamir, and Omer Har, was named earlier this year as Israel’s most promising early-stage Fintech startup by Citi accelerator, Intuit, and Visa for bringing superior external-data-driven predictive decision-making capabilities for the financial services industry. Last month, the company announced an additional $31 million in funding for its data science platform powered by automated data discovery. The Series B funding round was led by existing investor Zeev Ventures and joined by ex-Twitter leadership’s 01 Advisors and Sir Ronald Cohen’s Dynamic Loop, with the participation of seed investors Emerge and F2 Capital. Explorium’s total funding is now $50 million.  

The company empowers companies to build better predictive models by connecting their internal data to thousands of external data sources (including company, geospatial, behavioral, time-based, website data, and more), and then automatically uncovering hidden connections and generating custom signals and new data science ‘features’ that make predictions more accurate. In doing this, the Explorium platform empowers data scientists by eliminating the barrier to acquire the right data, and business leaders by giving them the ability to make better decisions based on superior predictive power.

Maor Shlomo, Co-Founder and CEO at Explorium said, “The greatest analytical challenge organizations will face over the next decade is finding the right data to feed their models and automated processes. The right data assets can make or break a company, or even propel a company to market leadership. This is why we built Explorium — to help companies discover the most relevant data assets out there, in an automated way. We’re proud that our existing investors have doubled down on Explorium, and that new, world-renowned partners have joined them.”

Since it announced its Series A funding last September, Explorium has tripled its customer base and expanded to incorporate data relevant to more industries and verticals. In addition to Explorium’s Data Engine, either as a standalone product or integrated into its advanced data science platform, the company helps organizations through their machine learning and artificial intelligence transformations, by building models that impact the bottom line and create a competitive advantage.

Recent customers include online small-business lender OnDeck, global media agency CrossMedia, small business banking provider BlueVine, online eyewear retailer GlassesUSA, and small business loan provider Behalf. Explorium has also partnered with organizations including Amazon Web Services, cloud data platform Snowflake, and data-driven strategy and consulting firm Nova Consulting.

“It was pure serendipity that I met Explorium; they are the greatest startup that I’ve encountered over the last several years,” said Nicolas Harlé, General Manager at Nova Consulting Group and a former Senior Partner and Managing Director at Boston Consulting Group. “Explorium is about breakthroughs — breakthroughs in the search for external data for machine learning, breakthroughs in the search for the most relevant data for my model, breakthroughs in that it’s not a one-off, but a continuous process, and breakthroughs for our data ingestion, cleansing, and model monitoring. Explorium permanently searches for data enrichment and improvement, which perfectly fits in the current, uncertain climate and helps us to be permanently adaptive and push forward in our quest for constant improvement.”

“Explorium is our go-to partner for all things data,” said Einat Aviv, Data Science Director at Bluevine. “They provide automated access to a wide range of sources and impactful signals, complemented by a strong platform that generates a myriad of features that continually result in more accurate models, driving better business results. Explorium is a great partner and our first stop when developing a new model.”

Oren Zeev, founding Partner at Zeev Ventures, said “Explorium represents a new category in the world of data science, and their success in winning both global brands and fast-growing startups as customers demonstrates that companies desperately need better data and the right tools to make use of it”.

Adam Bain, Twitter’s former COO and Partner at 01 Advisors, explained his decision to invest. “When I first saw Explorium in action, I thought ‘every company that uses data needs this’. It’s like an app store for predictive models; you throw them your model and it finds different data to make it work better. It’s really that simple. We’re excited to be a part of it,” he said.

Besides having its origins in Tel Aviv, Israel, the company also has offices in San Mateo, California.

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