Location data startup Placer Labs Inc., better known as Placer.ai, said today it has closed on a bumper $75 million funding round that brings its valuation to almost $1.5 billion.

Today’s round was unusual in that Placer.ai declined to name any of its investors, except to say that they were all existing backers. According to data from PitchBook, the real estate investing firm GEM Realty Capital was one of the participants in the round, while it lists more than 50 investors that have previously backed the startup.

Its known backers include Fifth Wall Ventures, Array Ventures, WndrCo and MMC Technology Ventures, plus angel investors such as J.M. Schapiro, chief executive of Continental Realty Corp., and Josh Buckley, former CEO of Product Hunt, who led the company’s prior $100 million round in January 2022.

Los Altos, California-based Placer.ai is the creator of a platform that uses data from more than 50 sources to measure foot traffic at locations such as retail stores. A brick-and-mortar retailer can use the startup’s platform to track how many visitors each of its locations draws per day. With Placer.ai’s data, business users can run analyses to answer questions such as to what extent seasonality impacts sales and whether a marketing campaign prompting a store was successful.

Identifying opportunities to launch new stores is another use case that Placer.ai targets. According to the startup, the data provided by its platform can help companies more effectively plan retail expansion initiatives.

The company’s platform also has uses outside of the retail industry. For instance, real estate companies rely on its platform to spot investment opportunities. A company seeking to purchase a shopping mall, for example, could use Placer.ai’s platform to find potential acquisition targets and compare the buildings’ foot traffic to identify the most suitable investment. Placer.ai’s customer base also includes a growing number of municipalities, as well as organizations from other areas such as the financial services sector.

Placer.ai has emerged as a major player in the location data industry, competing against the likes of Foursquare Inc. and Esri Global Inc. Like those companies, Placer.ai’s services are made accessible through a software development kit that can be installed in hundreds of applications. The startup insists that its platform supports “privacy by design” and makes sure that all of the data it provides to companies is anonymized.

Although the startup was secretive about its latest backers, it was more open about the state of its business. In an interview with TechCrunch, Placer.ai co-founder and CEO Noam Ben-Zvi said his company had surpassed a $100 million annual revenue run rate in February, growing its revenue by more than 80% in the last 12 months. He’s also forecasting yet more growth, saying revenue is forecast to rise by an additional 60% this year.

No surprises then, Placer.ai also claims to have grown its customer base quite significantly. Ben-Zvi said the startup’s customer base has mushroomed to more than 4,300, up from just over 1,000 when it announced its previous funding round in early 2022. Those customers include Century 21 Real Estate LLC., Sony Corp. and various city development organizations.

According to Ben-Zvi, what ties all of these customers together is that “they all have a stake in the real world.”

Looking forward, Placer.ai said it plans to use the funds from its latest round to boost its business development and add more features and datasets to its platform. In addition, it wants to explore ways in which it can integrate more artificial intelligence into its platform and evolve into a “one-stop-shop for market research,” the CEO said.

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