Placer.ai, an Israeli company that develops a location analytics and foot traffic data platform, has raised $75 million at a $1.5 billion valuation. This marks a 50% increase from the $1 billion valuation it received in its previous funding round in January 2022. The latest round included only existing investors, such as Josh Buckley, WndrCo, Lachy Groom, MMC Technology Ventures LLC, Fifth Wall Ventures, and Array Ventures.
Placer has raised over $240 million to date. Founded in 2018 by Noam Ben-Zvi, Zohar Ben-Yehuda, Ofir Lemel, and Oded Fossfeld, Placer.ai’s foot traffic analytics platform provides insights into any property to help understand the factors that drive success. Ben-Zvi told TechCrunch that the company had surpassed a $100 million annual revenue run rate in February, growing by more than 80% in the last 12 months.
He also noted that the company’s ARR was nearing $30 million following its previous round in January 2022. The startup’s customer base has grown significantly, expanding to over 4,300 from around 1,000 in 2022. Placer.ai provides location-based analytics to companies across various industries, including retail, events and entertainment, consumer packaged goods, real estate, financial services, and healthcare.
The startup combines AI with anonymized data from third-party apps to deliver its services. The significance of location data for businesses extends beyond just app publishers, becoming vital across various sectors. Placer.ai’s analytics provide insights into trends like foot traffic at specific locations or stores, detailed demographic profiles, and consumer behavior data.
Placer.ai’s $75M funding milestone
The company gathers data through an SDK installed in hundreds of apps and from other third-party sources, ensuring all data is anonymized before use. Placer.ai reports over 50 investors, including names like Josh Buckley, WndrCo, Lachy Groom, MMC Technology Ventures, Fifth Wall Ventures, and Array Ventures.
The list of individual investors includes J.M. Schapiro, Eliot Bencuya, Jeff Karsh, Daniel Klein, and Majestic Realty. According to CFO Dean Neese, the recent funding was prompted by inbound interest. The raised capital will support business development and add more features and datasets to the Placer.ai platform, which already offers hundreds of datasets.
Founded in 2018 by Israelis Noam Ben-Zvi, Zohar Bar-Yehuda, Oded Fossfeld, and Ofir Lemel, Placer.ai faced potential disaster during the COVID-19 pandemic as physical gatherings ceased. However, their data provided critical visibility into ongoing activities, which helped the company expand as the world reopened. Placer.ai uses machine learning and inference to create comprehensive profiles from app data, a feature highly valued by its users who seek integrated AI-powered market research solutions.
Ben-Zvi emphasized, “Customers want a holistic one-stop-shop platform for market research. They may ask themselves: Should I expand to this market? How are my competitors doing?
What they want is all the relevant underlying data, as well as all the aggregations and tools on top. Analytics is a core ingredient.”
This news underscores the ongoing importance and value of location data in today’s business world. It cuts across numerous verticals and proves indispensable for strategic decision-making.
