Tech companies Permutive, Tarabut Gateway and Unlock Technologies have received funding for a variety of different reasons.
Permutive, an audience platform for publishers and advertisers, got $75 million (£55 million) in Series C investment from SoftBank Vision Fund.
Tarabut Gateway, a Dubai-headquartered open banking platform, concluded a seed round of $13 million (£9.5 million) and plans expansion in the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region. The firm has offices in Bahrain, the UAE and UK.
UK-based Unlock, a SaaS-enabled marketplace for remote teams, has raised a $2 million (£1.5 million) seed round.
Privacy and Permutive
Permutive has offices in London and New York. The latest funding brings Permutive’s total raised to date to $105 million (£77 million), with previous investors EQT Ventures, Octopus Ventures and ACE & Company also participating.
The funding will be used for its patented on-device technology and audience platform to create a “privacy-first infrastructure for programmatic advertising”.
According to Permutive, personal data has powered digital advertising for over ten years; and its misuse has captured the attention of regulators and consumers. It reckons there has been a shift from adtech owned programmatic advertising to a publisher owned privacy-first web.
The firm’s platform has seen a 20x growth in targeted ads in the last two years. Clients in Europe and North America include News Corp, Hearst, BuzzFeed, Penske, The Guardian, Vox Media, Insider, Hubert Burda Media and Condé Nast International.
A Gateway to MENA
The latest round for Tarabut Gateway follows a pre-series A of $12 million (£8.8 million) led by Tiger Global.
The company welcomes new investors including the Dubai International Fintech Fund, the investment vehicle of Dubai’s International Financial Centre (DIFC).
The investment follows Tiger Global’s most recent investment in other open banking players, such as TrueLayer in the UK and Mono in Africa.
Tarabut Gateway says it is the first licensed account information service provider (AISP) and payment initiation service provider (PISP) in the MENA region.
Abdulla Almoayed, Tarabut Gateway’s Founder and CEO, explains: “The MENA region is a complex web of countries and regulations. This makes it a challenging area to serve with any single overarching financial product whilst remaining compliant in a highly developed landscape with many differing markets.”
Excitement Unlock-ed
Unlock’s seed round was led by La Famiglia, and the lineup of investors also includes Kima Ventures, Antler, GuideStar Ventures and a lot of angels.
The company works in the Culture as a Service space. With the rise in remote working, Unlock says it tackles what it believes to be a core part of this new battleground in the war for talent – culture and belonging.
Unlock gives workplaces an online venue with curated interactive experiences. It has 300+ purpose-built bite-size conversation starters and games, and 50+ curated experiences from virtual activity creators.
Maria Wlosinska, Co-Founder and CEO of Unlock, says: “Generic video calls can very easily feel like a classroom experience, whereas we wanted to build a truly interactive team experience.”
Judith Dada, La Famiglia’s General Partner, adds that Unlock goes “beyond the limited functionality of meeting platforms like Zoom whose monotony causes fatigue and disengagement”.
