Cortexica Visual Systems Ltd., a London, UK-based visual search company, received a £1.5m investment from Imperial Innovations (AIM: IVO).
Imperial Innovations, which first invested in Cortexica in 2009, will hold on conversion of loan stock, a 73.4% equity stake in the issued share capital of the company (on a fully diluted basis).
Cortexica intends to use the funds to continue winning new business and expand its customer base.
Led by Iain McCready, CEO, the company has developed and is selling image recognition, visual search and categorization software for online businesses based on original research from Imperial College London. Its FindSimilar™ technology uses algorithms that mimic the way the human brain recognizes images and objects to return visually similar items from an online database or inventory when users take a photograph of a piece of clothing or accessory with their mobile device.
Early adopters include online retailers Zalando, ShopStyle, Style Thief and Trendabl and the company has signed up ten new customers in the past six months.
David Soskin was recently appointed as non-executive chairman.
FinSMEs
16/06/2014