Social gaming company Gree has led a $10m bridge round for Japan-based news reading app developer SmartNews as the company seeks a larger series C round from US investors, TechCrunch reported earlier today.
Gree was followed by Globis Capital Partners, Atomico, Mixi and Social Venture Partners.
In August 2014, SmartNews raised a $36m series B round led by Gree and featuring Atomico. Globis previously provided a $4m series A round in 2013.
SmartNews’ app uses algorithms to curate trending news stories, taking into account not only which stories a user clicks on but also which headlines they stop scrolling on. The app then recommends articles read by people with a similar behavioural pattern, adjusting for location and other details.
The company has recently opened offices in San Francisco and is looking to expand its presence in the US market. The bridge round will be used to hire machine learning and data science engineers.
SmartNews has signed on a wide range of publishers such as MSNBC, Time, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, Vice, Quartz, AOL, Vox, The Verge, AP, Reuters, USA Today and Fox News.
– image courtesy of SmartNews