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Intel joins $25M round into customer engagement startup Urban Airship
A group of prominent investors that include Intel Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc. has decided to bet $25 million on Urban Airship Inc., a fast-growing customer engagement provider based out of Portland, Oregon.
The startup announced the new funding this morning. The investment represents Urban Airship’s sixth round to date and will go toward widening the adoption of its marketing platform, which lets brands engage users across different channels with targeted messages.
Urban Airship claims to have delivered more than 2 trillion messages to date. Consumer brands such as Adidas AG and The Home Depot Inc. rely on the startup’s platform to send out shopping promotions, while media companies use it to alert readers when they publish new content. The startup also claims customers in several other market segments such as telecommunications.
Besides enabling companies to deliver personalized messages on a large scale, Urban Airship said its platform also allows them to do via a wide range of digital channels. The service can be used to deliver most of everything everything from emails and texts to Alexa voice notifications.
The Alexa support is one of the numerous new features that Urban Airship has added over the past year in a bid to woo brands. Other recent additions include a Google Pay integration and artificial intelligence capabilities that can determine the best time to engage consumers. This aggressive development roadmap seems to be paying dividends, with Urban Airship claiming that its recurring revenue is increasing at 250 percent year-over-year.
Such growth isn’t unusual for a venture-backed startup. What makes the figure stand out is that Urban Airship claims to be increasing revenue at such a rate while breaking even, which puts it close to profitability. Chief Executive Officer Brett Caine told TechCrunch that the startup decided to raise new funding not out of necessity but because it’s looking to speed up growth.
Intel and Verizon were joined by five other investors in the round. The group included Foundry Group, which led the investment, True Ventures, August Capital, QuestMark Partners and Franklin Park Associates.
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