Data science company Black Swan to spread wings with £6.2m funding

Black Swan Data Ltd., a start-up that works to support the marketing efforts of brands such as Disney and PepsiCo, has completed a £6.2m Series B round backed by Albion Ventures, Blackstone, and Mitsui.

Founded in 2011 by Steve King and Hugo Amos, Black Swan applies big data and predictive data science techniques to consumer marketing to help businesses better understand their audience.

Headquartered in London, the fast-growing start-up has offices in Bristol, Exeter, Hungary, Los Angeles, New York, Singapore, South Africa and Toronto and employs over 240 staff.

In March, the business announced it had secured £3m from Mitsui to fuel global expansion.

It wants to use this latest funding to support development of its software platform ‘The Nest’ which is said to provide deep customer insights by linking publicly available data to a customer’s private data.

It will also add to its senior management team, having recently appointed former DataSift VP of product management as product director.

Black Swan believes it its primed to tap into the growing data market and has argued that, by 2018, over half of large organisations will compete using advanced analytics and proprietary algorithms.

Black Swan’s King commented: “Black Swan’s seen some phenomenal growth over the last 18 months and this has been reflected in the conversations we’ve been having with investors and clients alike.

We’re at the forefront of this industry opportunity and we’re working with some of the world’s biggest brands to help them not only make sense of the data around them, but use to gain a competitive advantage and better engage with their audiences.

According to Ed Lascelles, partner at Albion Ventures: “Businesses that leverage data intelligently will lead the way and Black Swan has the potential to become the leading provider of automated, predictive analytics to the digital marketing sector.”