Investinor portfolio company Unacast raises $17.5 million

The Series B round was led by Transatlantic fund White Star Capital, which is a new investor in company together with investor Telia. The existing investors Open Ocean Capital and Investinor also increased their ownership.

Investinor has followed Unacast since the company was founded, led the Series A round in 2016, and is very satisfied with the development in the company.

“Unacast has built the leading global location platform,” says investment director Jon Øyvind Eriksen of Investinor. “The company is well position to capture a substantial part of real-world data market, which is estimated to be worth $5 billion by 2020, according to market analysts.”

Founded in Oslo, Norway and now headquartered in New York City, Unacast is on a mission to understand human movement and behavior in the real world, empowering companies across a wide range of industries to better understand how people move, act and behave while maintaining and protecting user privacy. With clients in marketing technology, research and analytics, finance, governments, and city planning, Unacast will continue to expand the use of its human movement and behavior data throughout 2018, engaging across more verticals than any other company in the location data intelligence space and expanding into the European market.
“The location and human behavior data space is still nascent, but Unacast has proven that it is one of the most trusted names in the market,” said Christian Hernandez Gallardo, managing partner at White Star Capital and former head of international partnerships for Facebook, “Location is a complex data set to interpret and understand, and as the segment grows and businesses require not just data, but the context to extract value from it, they will have a greater need of partners that can support them. Both the industry and Unacast have grown substantially in a relatively short time, and we believe Unacast is primed to extend its leadership position throughout.”

How it Works

Unacast is a transparent source of high-quality location data. Through its network of location data partners, Unacast’s advanced filtering algorithms ensure all data that ends up in the Real World Graph© is true visits, meaning the company knows both the device and the context of visits. This data is coupled with other location signals to provide the full picture of a user’s behavior in the real world while maintaining and respecting user privacy —enabling Unacast to extract a deeper understanding of the data within seconds and pass that knowledge onto its clients, including Amobee, Blis, SITO Mobile, Cognitiv, Qualia, TVadSync and others who use the data to make greater products and better decisions.
Over the past 18 months, Unacast has grown alongside the nascent real-world location data industry. Client adoption has accelerated, and more than 100 location based partners now share their data directly with Unacast. Meanwhile, the company has quadrupled in staff size, growing to 40 employees across the U.S. and Norway while maintaining a strong Nordic working culture. This emphasis on people and culture has garnered the company multiple awards, most recently winning the 2017 Tech Culture Award from CNET. Founders Thomas Walle and Kjartan Slette were also part of the founding team behind TIDAL, the music-streaming service company acquired by Jay-Z.

About Unacast

Unacast is the leading transparent, contextualized location data platform. We aim to empower companies and individuals by providing the most accurate understanding of human activity in the real world. Unacast empowers the next generation of data-driven industries with unique and highly accurate data sets and insights, built on a foundation of double-deterministic™ location data from our proprietary Real World Graph®.

Unacast, founded in Oslo, Norway and now headquartered in NYC, was founded by Thomas Walle and Kjartan Slette, who were also part of the founding team behind TIDAL, the music streaming company acquired by Jay Z. Unacast has garnered multiple awards for its platform, campaigns and for its company culture, including Best New Company at the Nordic Startup Awards. Inc. Magazine has called Unacast “The Startup That Just Might Threaten Google.”

About White Star Capital

White Star Capital is an early-stage Venture Capital firm that invests in exceptional entrepreneurs building ambitious, data-driven businesses. Based out of London, New York, Montreal, Paris and Tokyo our international presence, perspective and people enable us to partner closely with our Founders to help them scale internationally from Series A onwards. Find out more about how we venture beyond at www.whitestarvc.com.

About Investinor
Investinor is an evergreen multi-stage venture capital investment company funded by the Norwegian government. Investinor always syndicates its investments with other investors, and aims to be a gateway to Norway for international venture capital investors. Investinor is the largest venture capital investor in Norway, and manages NOK 4.2 billion (MUSD 540). More info at www.investinor.no/en/

About OpenOcean Capital
OpenOcean backs relentless entrepreneurs to build global winners. We like companies founded in deep technological breakthrough; with large user-bases; that disrupt existing markets; handle large amounts of data; crack serious technical challenges and sell their products to other businesses. We see ‘delicious’ software is the core of enduring businesses: software that is not simply easy to use, but easy to love, that delivers better products and faster scaling.

OpenOcean is a team of entrepreneurs, developers, and executives with the experience of building billion dollar companies, including MySQL, coupled with hunger and determination to continue learning.

About Telia Company
We’re Telia Company, the New Generation Telco. Our 21,000 talented colleagues serve millions of customers every day in one of the world’s most connected regions. With a strong connectivity base, we’re the hub in the digital ecosystem, empowering people, companies and societies to stay in touch with everything that matters 24/7/365 – on their terms. Headquartered in Stockholm, the heart of innovation and technology, we’re set to change the industry and bring the world even closer for our customers. Read more at www.teliacompany.com.