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Placer.ai aims to help retail, hospitality and real estate businesses deal with the ‘retail apocalypse’ by using real-time location analytics and foot-traffic data.
Placer.ai has announced that it raised $12m in its Series A round of funding, which was led by JBV Capital.
There was additional participation from Aleph, Reciprocal Ventures, OCA Ventures, the start-up’s existing investors and a group of new strategic investors. The funding will be used to help grow Placer.ai’s operations in the US, and to expand the company’s R&D efforts to drive new product features and capabilities.
Launched in 2016, the San Francisco start-up has developed a SaaS platform that provides real-time access to location analytics and foot-traffic data, which can give retail and hospitality businesses the tools to improve decision making, reduce risk and identify opportunities with location data.
Lifting the fog on the ‘retail apocalypse’
Placer.ai co-founder and CEO Noam Ben Zvi said: “The impact of the ‘retail apocalypse’ was accelerated by a fundamental lack of visibility into offline performance; but empowering brands – big and small – with accurate, reliable data enables them to navigate this new reality.
“Placer.ai lifts the fog and empowers all professionals with actionable insights into any location enabling better, faster decisions. This results in smarter growth, more sustainable businesses, and allows newer players to enter the market.
“With this funding, we can ramp up our development so we can continue to uncover new features and tools to help our customers reach their business goals.”
Placer.ai’s customers include “some of the largest players in commercial real estate, retail and hospitality”, according to the start-up, such as JLL, Regency, Verizon, Caesars Entertainment, SRS and Brixmor.
‘Game-changing’
Jeffrey Bazar, general partner at JBV Capital and board member at Placer.ai, said: “Placer’s rapid growth has been amazing to witness. Noam and his team have done a remarkable job simplifying and standardising how companies of all sizes support these business-critical use cases.
“As a result, they have built the new clear software leader in the industry, which represents an incredibly large market that can’t adopt Placer’s solution fast enough.”
NewMark Merrill CEO and president Sandy Sigal added: “Until Placer.ai, deciding which properties to buy or sell was a combination of disparate facts, intuition and witchcraft. Placer.ai is a game-changing product and it is driving widespread adoption across the CRE and retail industries.”
Prior to its Series A, Placer.ai raised $4m in its seed round of funding, with investment from Chicago-based IrishAngels Ventures, Stage Venture Partners and Array Ventures.
