At the Intel Capital Global Summit today in San Diego, California, Bordeaux-based startup Mobiles Republic (which runs News Republic) announced a $6 Million round of funding from Intel Capital, XAnge Private Equity & Creathor Venture, in order to support product development & expansion into the US market. The application relies on a powerful real-time semantic engine which allows them not only to provide “context aware advertising” but also to filter based on personalized preferences.
“Their real-time semantic engine allows advanced personalized filtering and context aware advertising, which provides a very powerful value proposition towards advertisers & publishers.” – Marcos Battisti, MD Intel Capital Western Europe & Israel
The app, which tracks more than a million topics, is currently available in Eight languages (Chines, French, Spanish, Italian, German, etc) as well as specific US, UK and international versions of English. In addition to their flagship product News Republic (iPhone app here), they also run a “geek-oriented” tech news app called Appy Geek, as well as Appy Gamer, Glamlife & Sports Republic. They offer news from over 800 partner sources, including the Financial Times, Huffington Post & CNET, and use their proprietary TagNav semantic search technology to make each app as specialized as possible for the user.
Intel Capital & XAnge invest $6 Million into Bordeaux-based News aggregator Mobiles Republic http://t.co/yfrZddGzIO by @LiamBoogar
— Rude Baguette (@RudeBaguette) October 23, 2013
Founder & CEO Gilles Raymond founded the company in 2008, and the fundraising represents a serious accomplishment for the company, which has offices in Beijing & San Francisco, in addition to their Bordeaux headquarters. The company has a great positioning in the intersection between AdTech, semantic search & media that should allow them to scale up their offer quite nicely both to users, to publishers, and to advertisers.