September 2019
RETAIL TECHNOLOGIES
Daisy Intelligence Raises C$10 Million in Funding to Scale its AI Platform
Series A investment round by Framework Venture Partners and Sonae IM
Daisy Intelligence announced that it has raised C$10 million (Canadian dollars, c. €7M) in Series A financing led by Framework Venture Partners and partnered by European-based corporate investor, Sonae IM. The funding will enable Daisy to expand globally, invest in sales and marketing, provide further support for its customer success teams, and expand its operational infrastructure as growth demands.
Daisy’s AI-powered technology platform helps retailers and insurance companies generate significantly improved financial results by delivering business recommendations and automating complex processes beyond human capability.
Daisy is driving a revolution in retail with its core AI SaaS platform, adding intelligence and automation to merchandising decisions. Daisy has helped its retail clients increase year over year, same store sales an average of 2.9% by optimizing their promotional product and pricing mix. Insurance companies use Daisy’s AI-powered risk management platform to detect and avoid millions of dollars in fraud and automatically adjudicate claims.
Daisy’s proprietary AI technology, which uses reinforcement learning, is attracting a rapidly growing client base across the U.S., Canada, Latin America, and Europe based on a record of proven business results. Over the past year, Daisy has doubled its revenues and staff by adding new clients and further deepening existing relationships with leading retailers and insurance companies.
“This financing round reflects the growing interest in our AI-powered platform from companies around the world looking to drive higher sales and profits with our unique technology that helps them make business decisions,” said Gary Saarenvirta, founder and CEO of Daisy. “This investment supports Daisy’s mission to empower people to achieve their best by using machine intelligence to help them with the most difficult tasks, freeing up their time to focus on more strategic business matters. With support from the world-class investors at Framework and Sonae IM, we are incredibly well positioned to execute on our vision.”
A preeminent authority on AI, Saarenvirta leveraged his background in aerospace engineering to bring autonomous machine intelligence based on reinforcement learning to clients in retail and insurance.
“There is a lot of vaporware and broken promises in the AI startup landscape,” said Peter Misek, Founding Partner at Framework Venture Partners. “After meeting hundreds of startups, Daisy was the first we met where we felt the promise could be delivered.”
The investment in Daisy is one of the first from Toronto-based Framework Venture Partners’ new $150 million fund focused on supporting rapidly scaling tech companies in Canada and abroad. Framework invests in software companies with a focus on businesses re-imagining the consumption and delivery of financial services or applying artificial intelligence solutions to large industry-specific datasets.
“Daisy Intelligence attracted our attention with its distinctive AI capabilities applied to merchandising, which is definitely a crucial activity within grocery retail. As a strategic investor with a strong European foothold, we have the ambition to support the company, with every means possible, in its growth and global expansion,” said Eduardo Piedade, CEO of Sonae IM.
Sonae IM is a European-based corporate venture investor specializing in retail, telecommunications, and cybersecurity technology, with a global mandate to invest in B2B companies both in growth and early stages. In retail tech, Sonae IM currently has more than 10 active investments worldwide, with Daisy Intelligence as its first investment in Canada.
About Daisy Intelligence
Daisy is an AI-powered platform for retail and insurance. Daisy uses reinforcement learning, a branch of AI, and its patent-pending Theory of Retail™ and Theory of Risk™ to be truly unique in the marketplace and on the cutting edge of the category management and risk management revolution. Daisy’s platform, developed by a highly skilled team of 50+ computational scientists, mathematicians and business domain experts, analyzes 100% of an organization’s transactions, executing billions of simulations daily to deliver optimized merchandise planning and risk management decisions for its clients. For additional information visit daisyintelligence.com.
About Framework Venture Partners
Framework Venture Partners is a software-focused venture capital firm that combines a unique data-driven investment process with a collaborative engagement model with the mission of helping entrepreneurs build and scale world-class companies. Led by co-founders and partners, Peter Misek and Andrew Lugsdin, who combined bring more than 35 years of domestic and international VC experience, Framework Venture Partners invests in software companies with a focus on businesses re-imagining the consumption and delivery of financial services, or applying artificial intelligence solutions to large industry-specific datasets. For more information, visit https://www.framework.vc.
About Sonae IM
Sonae IM is the technology investment arm of Sonae Group (www.sonae.pt/en/). Sonae IM invests in retail and telecommunications technology companies, as well as in cybersecurity. Sonae IM has 32 direct investments, encompassing stakes in companies from early stage to growth stage and stakes in 20 companies through Armilar Venture Partners.
