US-based location data software developer Unacast raised $17.5m on Tuesday in a series B round backed by a consortium that included telecommunications firm Telia.
The round was co-led by Norwegian government-backed investment firm Investinor and venture capital fund White Star Capital and VC firm OpenOcean Capital.
Unacast has developed a platform that provides contextualised location data collected by proximity sensors and beacons in order to help businesses understand customer activity in the real world.
The company has so far chiefly targeted clients in the marketing technology, research and analytics, financial, government and urban planning sectors, but will use part of the series B capital to enter additional verticals.
The funding will also enable Unacast to further improve the quality of its data as it hires more staff and expands further across Europe, having already entered the Norwegian market.
Telia’s emerging businesses and innovation hub, Division X, has formed a partnership with Unacast that will involve them combining datasets to derive richer data insights.
Investinor and OpenOcean Capital previously co-led Unacast’s $5m series A round in 2016, with participation from various angel investors.
New Mark Invest, Ice Leopard Invest, and Blystad Invest and angel investors had already supplied $1.6m in seed capital for the company the previous year.