Today, I’m excited to announce Qloo’s $25M Series C. Our journey to this moment began with an ambitious question - how can we enhance human experiences by expanding our ability to predict nuanced tastes?
Despite having amassed massive databases, most tech companies’ recommendation algorithms are built around single and siloed cultural domains, like music, film, television, dining, and travel destinations. Their models, for example, say, “You’ve played this jazz song three times in the past day, so let us recommend this other jazz artist.” In reality, consumer tastes and cultural preferences are far more complicated. Understanding these complexities is important to creating diverse and meaningful experiences — the kind that make life feel rich and fulfilling.
I was reminded of what happens when businesses over-simplify tastes when listening to a recent episode of The Ezra Klein Show. During this episode, Ezra Klein and author Kyle Chayka discuss how many businesses reflexively revert to the mean, resulting in generic and bland experiences. Ever notice how many coffee shops are starting to look the same around the world? It’s because consumers’ specific preferences are not fully appreciated. What’s trending and aesthetically pleasing in Cape Town is different than in Singapore, and businesses need a better way to uncover and embrace this.
We founded Qloo to help people appreciate the numerous shades of human tastes. And a decade later we’ve become known for our sophisticated AI-powered personalization engine that’s composed of behavioral data from consumers around the globe, including over half a billion cross-domain attributes spanning consumer brands, music, film, TV, podcasts, dining, travel, and more. As we enter the revolutionary AI era, our detailed, and privacy-centric understanding of consumer preferences is more important than ever.
Businesses’ demand for new generative AI experiences and services is as energizing as the early days of the internet or mobile phones, and is giving birth to an entirely new software category that is “B2AI.”
Every day our clients share new generative AI ideas and use cases that transcend “web vs. mobile” and are instead focused on language. It’s incredibly exciting, and we’re continually reminded how important Qloo’s Taste AI is for getting this next era of consumer experiences right.
As companies invest in these generative AI solutions, they risk continuing to revert to the mean. LLMs unlock easy customer experiences with chatbot-like interfaces, but are notorious for finding and returning the average. And we know what that will result in five years down the road — myriad solutions that are hardly differentiated from one another.
Qloo is proving to be an essential engine powering unique and impactful generative AI experiences, providing a deep understanding of cultural entities and individual preferences in a way that puts consumer privacy and ethical data practices at the center. We are a foundational oracle in this rapidly evolving AI landscape — enriching platforms with a detailed appreciation of personal tastes at a global scale.
While we continue to find success in the B2B2C (or should I say “B2AI”) context, we haven’t lost sight of our mission to empower individuals to discover more about their own personal tastes. Our acquisition of TasteDive was a step towards that goal. We’ve since eliminated advertisements and enhanced the product’s features, ensuring TasteDive is an unadulterated platform for cataloging personal tastes — one small step towards helping people avoid mindlessly reverting to the mainstream.
And so you’re probably wondering, given all of this success, why did Qloo raise a Series C?
We’ve thrived as a lean, engineering-centric organization for years, but as the world rushes to embrace the generative AI era, we know we must scale our operations to fully unleash Qloo’s potential. It’s essential to us that these future-looking experiences and services are built around a nuanced understanding of human’s tastes, preferences, and behaviors. Our Series C supports enhanced engineering capabilities, sales, and go to market staff, allowing us to expand the boundaries of our Taste AI technology as the addressable market and use cases proliferate so rapidly. If this excites you, check out our jobs. We’re hiring across the board.
This strategic fundraising will enable Qloo to embrace the current moment and emerge as a pivotal player in taste prediction and cultural intelligence, equipped to empower a more human-centric AI future. We have so much more to share with you this year, including improvements to the API experience, a self-service platform, and more. If you’re interested in how Qloo can help power your business’s growth and innovation, drop us a line.