Real-time News App Banjo Reports $100m in Funding

banjo newsroomReal-time news analysis startup Banjo has scored $100m (£65.6m) in series C funding to invest into its data analysis business in a round led by Softbank and returning investor BlueRun Ventures.

The company started out as a social discovery app but has since pivoted to focus on its event analysis platform that provides data for news publishers and other organisations and powers live social content for brands including NBC, Fox and the BBC.

Banjo has said the latest round of investment, which is by far the largest cash injection it has seen so far, will be used to hire more data scientists and engineers, and develop the firms event analysis platform.

“We are building a crystal ball – a way to see and know virtually everything happening across the globe the moment it happens,” said Damien Patton, founder and CEO of Banjo. “By organising the planets social signals by location, weve changed the game for our customers, and we are just getting started.

“Now Banjo is moving far beyond social signals. Our technology will know and understand everything, about any location, at any time, creating value for everyone, from individuals to corporations to continents. We are working on connecting the worlds disparate real-time data streams and harnessing them into one unified source of unmatched insights.”

“Banjo is in an interesting space, bringing together the ideas of big data, local, mobile and trying to derive value from that combination for both consumers and businesses,” said Nikesh Arora, vice chairman of Softbank. “I am excited by what I have seen so far, and think this has the potential to be very interesting, and big.”