Factual Raises Another $35MM to Make Data Accessible to All

Company’s Position and Momentum Is Unique and Formidable

LOS ANGELES, CA –

Key Points

  • Factual has raised a significant round
  • Company Position (Neutral) is Unique/Offering Valued by Users
  • Momentum is Formidable

Factual®, the neutral data company that makes data accessible to everyone, announced that it has raised $35 million in Series B funding. In a $20.4+ trillion digital economy driven by data, Factual’s data drives businesses across a number of sectors with extremely strong adoption and momentum, and expansion underway.

Institutional and individual investors participating in this round include: Altpoint Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Data Collective, Haystack Partners, Heritage Group, Index Ventures, Miramar Ventures, Tamarisk Global, and Upfront Ventures, as well as Saif Mansour, Michael Ovitz and Tom Unterman. This group collectively supports other high-value data companies such as Palantir, Planet Labs, and The Climate Corporation. Factual has raised $62 million to date.

“Factual is a type of information transaction hub that grows strongly but quietly until it has a commanding market position — similar to Google in web & search data, or First Data in payments data,” said Matt Ocko, co-Managing Partner and co-founder of Data Collective. “As the world moves increasingly to mobile and IoT-centric models, a vast cloud of devices will need the uniquely enriched, actionable location data that Factual provides. Gil, as the man who invented AdSense at his last startup, is very likely to make the same kind of global and financial impact with this one.”

“In 2008 when I founded Factual, the need for a neutral data company whose only business is enabling others to build great products was crystal clear,” said Gil Elbaz, CEO & founder of Factual. “Since then, the need has only grown as there has been a demonstrated trend among large platforms to limit or shut down 3rd party access to their data in favor of their own products. Access to data is as critical for innovation as access to computing power or talent. I’m incredibly proud of the progress we’ve made to date and I am looking forward to the next phase of the company. As we forge ahead, we will continue to make data accessible, accelerating innovation and improving our daily lives.”

Factual will use the latest funds to scale and enhance its core data engineering capabilities, its sales and marketing efforts, and to fuel international expansion. Factual’s current customer base includes technology giants such as Apple Maps, Facebook, and Microsoft Bing, key payments leaders across card-issuing bank networks and payment processors, thousands of small to medium sized mobile app developers, and a strong group of advertising and marketing technology companies that collectively account for over $2 billion in mobile ad spend, Factual’s partners depend on its data to power high quality mobile experiences across all categories including some of the most important ones such as mapping, navigation, and local search, and social, messaging, and photos. Additionally, the largest advertisers on the planet in categories including auto, CPG, telecom, retail, and financial services use Factual data to deliver more relevant mobile advertising. As Factual continues to innovate and increase penetration in its target markets, it will steadily increase the depth and breadth of its data assets while increasing their utility and accessibility.

“The raise and the caliber of the latest investors is no surprise,” said existing investor Eric Paley, Founder Collective. “Since its emergence, Factual has steadily built itself into the key data player in mobile, powering many of the largest mobile companies in the world. Gil and his team have made good on executing on the original bold vision of building a neutral data company that enables everyone to be successful and doesn’t take sides. Factual is far more than a company; it’s a vision for the way data should work that is coming to fruition.”

To learn more about Factual, please visit: http://www.factual.com.

About Factual

Data is increasingly critical to driving innovation and no one should be at a data disadvantage. Factual believes that data should be accessible to every developer, entrepreneur, business, and organization — anyone who needs it to build a better app, provide a better search result, make smarter software, make a better decision, or help others make better decisions.

Factual is the neutral data company that makes data accessible to everyone, accelerating innovation and improving our daily lives. Thousands of developers, publishers, advertisers, and enterprises use Factual’s location data, including some of the world’s largest search, mapping, and social platforms, leading publishers and advertising technology firms encompassing billions of dollars of ad spend, and global leaders in financial services and payments. Factual’s core capability is an unmatched ability to build high-quality data, driven by its ever-expanding network of data-sharing partners and its data stack that turns billions of pieces of information into clean, structured factual data.

Factual is headquartered in Los Angeles, CA. For more information, visit http://www.factual.com.