Argus Labs rebrands itself as Sentiance, as the company moves out of concept development and rolls out its platform to clients and partners worldwide.
Sentiance has closed a US$ 2M round, led by Qbic and joined by Volta Ventures, with the participation of angel investors Michel Akkermans (Clear2Pay) and Will Margiloff (IgnitionOne).
“We at Qbic are thrilled by Sentiance’s vision to unlock the true potential of a smartphone by using sensor data to derive context, thus enabling truly personalized services. What you want when you want it: this is a very powerful value proposition. Our fund has the expertise and network to assist Sentiance’s strong management team in growing this disruptive technology into a worldwide market success”, says Guy Huylebroeck, Investment Partner at Qbic Venture Partners.
“Volta Ventures is always looking for strong teams and promising startups that have the ability to disrupt markets globally. Sentiance's smart contextualization, based on sensor and Internet of Things analytics, is simply impressive. Its unique approach of ambient profiling holds the key to building personas and profiles that Facebook or Google are missing out on”, says Frank Maene, Managing Partner at Volta Ventures.
Sentiance also substantially broadened its management team with Toon Vanparys as CEO and Frank Verbist as CTO, who both joined in October last year.
Toon and Frank joined the company as early seed investors, after having sold their previous venture Netmining (now IgnitionOne) to Dentsu plc. They bring an extensive background in the profiling, customer engagement, and personalization industry, and years of leading technical experience, including the development of high-transaction platforms in the advertising and targeting industry.
As we transition out of the ‘labs’ phase into a market-ready product, we decided to change the name to better reflect our mission statement from mobile data to smart life. We enable our clients to build intelligent and context-aware mobile experiences, by bringing sentient capabilities to smartphones and connected devices worldwide“, says Toon Vanparys, CEO of Sentiance.
“Based on what we see in the market, the opportunities for mobile personalization and engagement in the era of smartphones, wearables, and IOT are simply huge, and we’re only at the beginning of this revolution.”, says Toon, as Sentiance already signed up their first clients in the mobility, insurance, healthcare, and media industry. “We are excited to work with our new investors, their domain know-how and international experience will definitely help us expand internationally.”
About Sentiance
Sentiance is an intelligence-driven data science and behavior change company. We turn motion data into contextual insights and use behavioral change techniques to personalize engagement for safer and sustainable mobility and well-being experiences.
About Qbic
Qbic Arkiv Fund is an interuniversity risk capital fund investing in spin offs of the universities UGent, VUB, UAntwerpen, their associated Colleges and university hospitals, and VITO. Qbic has € 36,7 million under management. Qbic invests in starting companies and provides hands-on support in their journey toward commercial success. Qbic Arkiv Fund is a joint initiative with ARKimedes-Fund II (ARKimedes is an initiative of ParticipatieMaatschappij Vlaanderen NV and the Flemish Region).
About Volta Ventures
Volta Ventures Arkiv invests in young and ambitious internet and software companies in the Benelux. The fund’s team, with active support from some 30 business angels, expects to make a substantial impact on every company it invests in by working with the founders and management to identify new markets and customers, hire senior talent, provide ongoing guidance and arrange further financing rounds. Volta Ventures Arkiv is supported by ARKimedes-Fund II (an initiative of ParticipatieMaatschappij Vlaanderen NV and the Flemish Region) and the European Investment Fund.
