Gluru announcing the closing of a $1.5M seed round
London, January 12, 2016. Former Google, Amazon, Rackspace, Apple Execs close $1.5M Seed Round for startup Gluru: powering consumer & business applications that know what you need before you do.
Gluru (www.gluru.co), the new collaboration of former executives from Google, Amazon, Apple, Rackspace, and Shazam, announce the closing of a $1.5M seed round. Investors Playfair Capital and Gecad Ventures led the round, with participation from angels including former Shazam CTO Chee Wong, who is joining the Board of Directors along with lead investors. Gluru has built a sophisticated, machine-learning platform to bring smart, actionable structure to the myriad of unstructured user data taking over our lives. The company will launch Gluru Assistant, the first in a suite of multi-platform apps to be released in Q1 2015. Users can now request an invite for Alpha access at www.gluru.co. Gluru will also release an API for developers and enterprises to build its capabilities into new or existing applications for consumers and businesses alike.
Gluru brings order to the mass proliferation of unstructured data – the files, documents, messages, and other text-based content that make up our daily lives. IBM estimates that 80 percent of the world’s data is unstructured, with most stored haphazardly across cloud drives, computers, and other silos. Gluru unlocks access to this data in an increasingly automated, connected, and truly useful way, delivering a revitalized, modern file explorer with the potential to save every user at least 165 hours or up to one full week per year.
“Gluru will do for your own personal and business data what Google Now is attempting for web data – instantly assess and continuously learn about the information you need, to predict and deliver it when you need it, often before you realize it yourself,” said Tim Porter, founder and CEO of Gluru. “For personal use, this means simplifying your life; for business, drastically improved productivity, workflow and operational performance.”
The Gluru platform applies a combination of advanced machine-learning and natural language processing to multiple file-based data sources, leveraging unique algorithms to learn how a person lives and works. Gluru then organizes the files and predicts when the user will need specific content, based on the context of his or her work or personal life. Gluru operates completely in the background, making the user experience completely seamless and intuitive.
The first app targeted to launch from the Gluru suite, Gluru Assistant, will intelligently surface relevant information to users’ devices, triggered instantly and automatically by calls or emails they’re receiving, appointments they’ve scheduled, and more. In essence, it will offer a new approach to consolidated file collaboration, insight, and hierarchy, while future apps will offer further smart organizational features. The Gluru API, also scheduled for release in Q1, will make it simple for enterprises to integrate Gluru technology within their existing tools, including popular team collaboration suites like Yammer, Salesforce, and HipChat – boosting performance by bringing a wealth of unstructured, underutilized data into context and under control.
“As an executive of several multinational companies, I have seen the challenge and opportunity cost of managing unstructured data first-hand – and believe the team behind Gluru brings together the rare mix of breakthrough innovation and proven industry experience to create an entirely new and profitable market category,” said Diwaker Singh, Partner at Gecad Ventures. “With its platform, Gluru is poised to truly transform the way we interact with and leverage data to our advantage, both at home and in the workplace.”
“Our ethos at Playfair Capital is to find and back trailblazers who are bold enough to build technology that generates a quantum leap in the way people live and work for the better. The products Tim and the Gluru team are creating tackle an increasingly relevant problem head on, and are poised to deliver significant value for both enterprises and consumers. Billions of people suffer from data overload, fragmentation, and a lack of deep, automated insights – the desire for a solution like Gluru’s is overwhelmingly clear,” explained Nathan Benaich, Partner at Playfair Capital.
The funding will be used to propel Gluru’s growth by expanding the team, accelerating product development and cross-platform offerings, and bolstering the company’s infrastructure, including sales, marketing, and communications. To request an invitation to Gluru Assistant, or to register your interest in the developer API, visit www.gluru.co.
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