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Agorize raises US$14.6 million to step up international growth
Agorize, the leading online platform for Open Innovation challenges, has announced a new fundraising of US$14.6 million in Series B funding led by Creadev, alongside Sofiouest and existing equity holders, Iris Capital and Capnamic Ventures. This fundraising will allow Agorize to step up international growth and meet the growing demand from large corporate companies for Open Innovation solutions.
This new round of funding takes the total amount raised to US$19 million since the startup was founded in 2011.
A leading global platform for Open Innovation
Open Innovation is the belief that the best ideas can come from anywhere. Companies and organisations should engage with the best talents externally as well as internally to source the best solutions and accelerate their transformation. Agorize facilitates this by connecting businesses and organisations with innovators from across the world through our platform.
Over the last 18 months, Agorize has deployed its sales teams and opened offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Germany, and Canada. Its platform for Open Innovation challenges is tremendously popular worldwide. Agorize earns as much as half its turnover outside of France, and this latest fundraising means it can invest effectively in growing and scaling in its current markets.
Agorize satisfies the transformation and agility requirements of large corporates needing to ramp up the pace of their innovation development, bring about a shift in company culture and pinpoint talent and partners in innovation. Through its platforms, Agorize enables clients to involve their employees and Agorize’s community of innovative people, including students, developers and startups involved in strategic issues.
This solution has already been adopted by top global companies in all industries and sectors with over 200 clients on-board around the world; while more than 50 leading companies based out of Asia, including Amazon Web Services, Enterprise Singapore, LVMH Fashion Group, Schneider Electric, Singapore Airlines, have trusted Agorize Asia to organise challenges in over 10 different countries in Asia using our Open Innovation platform to engage with a community of 1 million innovators across Asia.
Unique SaaS model combined with a global community of innovators
Today, Agorize now enjoys a considerable competitive advantage thanks to its Open Innovation SaaS (Software as a System), which allows its clients to launch, manage and promote innovation challenges to an active community of 5 million innovators worldwide including students, developers, startups, designers and more.
The two underlying pillars of the firm’s offering - SaaS and innovator community - will now be reinforced by R&D investments in the platform and a major campaign to attract the world’s best innovators.
Reinventing how businesses work
Agorize allows clients to rethink the way in which they innovate by tapping into the talent of external innovators and ideas of employees across all departments in a refined approach to finding practical solutions to clients’ strategic issues.
By implementing these challenges, large corporates are adopting a new way of open collaboration based on giving free reign to creative synergies, teamwork and agility in order to speed up their transformation projects.
Indeed, Agorize’s clients say they innovate 5 to 10 times faster in this way than traditional methods, thanks to dozens of ground-breaking projects arising from challenges that attract up to several thousand online participants.
Agorize Asia CEO, Mathieu Toulemende, said: “In 2016, we arrived in Asia with one ambition: connecting large organisations with talented innovators. 3 years later and with a presence in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore, we are proud to have created thousands of meaningful business connections across the whole of Asia. This new fundraising will help us accelerate in our mission to meet with the fast growing demand for Open Innovation in the region.”
Agorize CEO and Co-founder, Charles Thou, said: "We are delighted by this key fundraising backed by top-class investors; this is a real badge of recognition of Agorize’s capacity to meet the growing demand for Open Innovation solutions from large corporates. The funds raised will allow us to consolidate our Open Innovation leadership by ramping up international growth, perfecting our technology even more and building on our community."
Creadev Senior VP, Florent Thomann, exclaimed: “We are thrilled at the prospect of supporting this dynamic trio of entrepreneurs in their business venture. The solution that they’ve developed represents a totally new way to go about innovation. It draws on and harnesses a huge source of creative energy far beyond the company’s borders. Agorize’s offering also allows any employee to become a promoter of this innovation and so it is a powerful way to shore up employee motivation.”
Sofiouest Senior VP Patrice Hutin commented: “We believe firmly in Agorize and its hugely powerful community of 5 million worldwide innovators. The company builds bonds underpinned by innovation and it is the most comprehensive solution out there.”
