Grafton Capital, the European growth stage technology investor, has acquired brand monitoring and creative testing platform ProQuo AI.
ProQuo AI International uses AI to turn consumers’ instinctive feelings about brands – the same instincts that drive 95 per cent of purchasing decisions – into actionable data across 16 drivers of brand value.
The business, which has a presence in London, New York and Johannesburg, has been growing at an average of 38 per cent per quarter since January 2021 and has over 130 customers including Keurig, Dr Pepper, Expedia, Amazon Prime and Unilever.
This is a first transaction for Grafton Capital’s recently launched Special Situations strategy, targeting investments into proven businesses which have struggled to raise traditional funding in the current market environment.
Grafton Capital’s founder, Ed Barroll Brown, led the transaction and said: “We believe ProQuo AI has a market leading product which is well placed to benefit from the drive towards marketing efficiency for consumer brands over the coming months and years.”
ProQuo’s new CEO, Jim Brennan, has significant experience in brand management having previously spent 10 years at Unilever.
He said: “Grafton Capital’s acquisition of ProQuo puts us in a stronger position than we’ve ever been in before. Grafton’s expertise in scaling growth stage, tech-enabled businesses like ours will focus our sales and marketing and streamline our operations so that we can deliver even greater value to our customers.”
Chief product officer Pete Harvey, a co-founder of ProQuo, who has led the development of the product and the R&D team, said: “With Grafton on board, I am more confident than ever that ProQuo will continue to grow and succeed.”