Antwerp-based Argus Labs has raised $1.5 Million for their emotion- and context-aware precision technology, the company announced this week on their blog. The startup, which previously received a $380K grant from the University of Brussels, says it’s been hard at work building a “synthetic neocortex,” as CEO & co-founder Filip Maertens puts it, which they plan to leverage to in various real-world solutions. One such solution, of course, is advertising, and the startup has shown an interest in the mobile ad-tech space, hoping to provide behavioural- and emotion-aware precision targeting technology in the mobile ad-tech industry.
In their announcement, Argust Labs also announced they would be shuttering their first product, Jini, which was released in 2012 and was among the 16 Startup Finalists at LeWeb Paris 2012. The product studied your daily habits in order to provide recommendations to you. I noted back in 2012 that it seemed to be a bit more SoLoMo focused than Connected Hardware – it seems that Argus Labs is still a bit split on how to apply their technology – though they have a clear enough vision to seduce investors (they are reported already working on a $3.5 Million Series A round).
What exactly “behavioural- and emotion-aware” technology will be able to do for the mobile ad-tech industry, I’m not exactly sure – whether I’m angry or hungry likely won’t increase my chances of clicking on an ugly mobile banner ad. However, this same White Label Brain may find a home in the Connected Hardware industry, as a replacement to the dependency on connected hardware startups to have internal data scientists in order to make sense of all the data they are collecting.
If you’d like to learn more about how Context lies at the (cerebral) core of the Connected Hardware industry, join Filip Maertens from Argus Labs alongside Evernote VP of Context Zeesha Currimbhoy & EverythingMe co-founder Ami Ben David at the Connected Conference on June 18th-19th– you can check out the entire program online & grab your Early Bird tickets today on our event website.