Toronto-based Senso.ai, a machine learning and predictive AI company, has announced the close of a $1.5 million Seed round led by BreakawayGrowth, a Silicon Valley venture capital fund, alongside NEXT Canada and Techstars.
Senso.ai has created vertical-specific data pipelines and AI products for the Canadian financial services industry. Since graduating from the inaugural cohort of NextAI in 2017, as well as Techstars in 2018, Senso.ai has grown its customer and partner base to include Royal Bank of Canada, among others. The company said with the new funding, which was announced during #CollisionConf in Toronto, it’s looking to expand into the U.S. market.
“We were inspired by the Senso.ai team’s ambition and the depth of their solution, and we knew we could help them grow even faster.”
“Large organizations around the world are attempting to collaborate with product-centric startups to embed innovation across their organizations,” said Saroop Bharwani, co-founder and CEO of Senso.ai. “By securing funding from some of the most experienced VCs and experts in the industry, we can accelerate our ability to innovate and deliver unique solutions to enable our customers to enhance their AI and machine learning capabilities with unprecedented bottom line results.”
Aiming to bridge the divide between agile startup technology and large-scale corporate power, Senso.ai offers financial institutions a cloud-based infrastructure to generate predictive insights about consumer portfolios which continuously improve over time.
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Since its founding in 2017, the company has made several additions to its suite of services, including a predictive credit portfolio monitoring solution, which aims to simplify the embedding process for larger institutions looking to integrate operation intelligence into existing workflows.
“RBC has been investing in the AI innovation ecosystem aggressively for years,” said Neil McLaughlin, group head of personal and commercial banking at RBC. “Our relationship with Senso.ai is another example of how we’re committed to investing in Canada’s startup ecosystem to the benefit of Canada and our shareholders”.
The company was also a part of TribalScale’s first cohort of its Venture Studios program, launched in early 2018 with the goal of creating and supporting startups in the financial services, automotive, media, and travel and hospitality industries.
Senso said it selected Breakaway Growth Fund as its lead investor because the firm’s partners have deep relationships and experience in SaaS, no/low code, and enterprise platforms which Senso said can help it accelerate its global growth plans. Breakaway Growth Fund is led by Albinson and Paul Heydon. Albinson is currently a director of Senso, Careerlist, chairman of the board at NinthDecimal, and actively supports the teams of Pinterest, DocuSign, and Turo where he also led investments.
“We were inspired by the Senso.ai team’s ambition and the depth of their solution, and we knew we could help them grow even faster,” said Chris Albinson, co-founder of C100 and BreakawayGrowth. “Our long-standing relationship with RBC and many other enterprises in the financial services industry globally is accelerating Senso.ai’s growth.”
Image courtesy Senso.ai
