Primer, a US-based developer of natural language processing (NLP) software, secured $110m yesterday in a series C round featuring Bloomberg Beta, the venture capital firm sponsored by media group Bloomberg.
The round was led by Addition and included fellow VC firm J2 Ventures, investment firms Steadfast Capital and Sands Capital, and Crumpton Ventures, the investment group founded by Henry Crumpton, former deputy director of the CIA’s Mission Center for Counterterrorism.
Existing backers including VC firms Amplify Partners, Lux Capital, Data Collective (DCVC), Section 32 and Avalon Ventures also participated in the round. Lee Fixel, founder of Addition, joined Primer’s board of directors in connection with the round.
Primer provides NLP technology for mission-critical applications used by government agencies, corporations and non-profit organisations. It launched Primer Automate, a no-code solution for users to build and train their own natural language processing models, earlier this year.
The company recently signed partnerships with data analytics service provider Palantir and software producer Microsoft to make its technology available within Palantir’s products and Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform.
The funding will be used to accelerate Primer’s product development activities for both the government and commercial sectors, with the aim of bringing its technology and AI products to more organisations worldwide.
Primer had previously raised $40m in a 2018 series B round led by Lux Capital with participation from Bloomberg Beta and Mubadala Ventures, the VC arm of Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Company, as well as Amplify Partners, Avalon Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, Crosslink Capital, DCVC, Section 32 and In-Q-Tel.