AI platform aifora raises €7 million in Series A financing round
- German AI startup aifora receives new capital to expand and further develop its SaaS platform for retail automation tools.
- Internationalization: After successful growth during the COVID crisis, the company is now pursuing further expansion of its core business in Europe
- Advisory Board: aifora strengthens position with experienced advisory board consisting of industry and technology experts
After the Düsseldorf-based startup aifora closed one of Germany’s largest seed financing rounds in 2018 with €3 million, the company is now receiving fresh growth capital totaling €7 million. In addition to a renewed investment from seed investor Capnamic, the funding comes from NRW.Bank, VC NewForge and family offices from the retail sector. The German venture capital company Capnamic Ventures, which primarily invests in SaaS B2B companies, signals its strong confidence in aifora with its repeated investment.
The raised capital will be used for the product development of the AI-based SaaS solutions and the planned internationalization. The new Advisory Board, which provides expertise in the areas of AI/technology, retail and scaling, will serve as additional support in the strategic direction.
Strategic investments for product development and market development.
With growth exceeding 60% in the crisis year 2020, aifora is optimistic about a move to the next level of growth. To achieve this, the company is focusing on developing new markets in addition to further developing its SaaS solutions for price and inventory automation. The growth plan includes expanding the team to drive both the aifora platform software products and the company’s sales channels for further internationalization. In addition to developing new European markets, the current market position in the core DACH market is to be expanded: aifora aims to become category leader in the region in the medium term.
“With the additional capital, we will further strengthen our market position and further accelerate the extraordinary growth, especially through stronger internationalization.” – Thomas Jesewski, co-founder and CEO of aifora
In the future, aifora plans to offer further functionalities around AI-based demand forecasting and the price and inventory automation solutions based on it on its platform to provide customers with further optimization opportunities and even greater value.
“In our industry, the saying ‘standing still means going backwards’ is more accurate than ever before. That’s why we will also use the financing and the additional know-how we have gained to expand our product development in order to offer our customers the best possible solutions. This focus on technology will allow us to continue to expand our customer base, address new markets and ultimately continue the company’s rapid growth.” – David Krings, Co-Founder and CTO of aifora
New advisory board to expand core competencies
As part of the Series A financing, aifora is also introducing its Advisory Board with former Orsay and Betty Barclay CEO Matthias Klein, as Advisory Board Chairman. In addition, the Advisory Board is supported by an extended Industry Advisory Board, including Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Maaß, Scientific Director of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence. The competencies of aifora will be further enhanced by the Advisory Board, which consists of successful entrepreneurs and experts from the fields of retail, artificial intelligence, software and enterprise scaling.
About Aifora
aifora empowers retailers and brands to optimize their pricing and inventory across channels and automate underlying processes. Through the use of artificial intelligence, the aifora platform processes data in a way that achieves the maximum benefit for the user. As a result, this leads to significantly higher profitability. The aifora SaaS solutions are quick and easy to integrate, individually configurable and thus amortize within a very short time. You can find all information at: www.aifora.com