Project A leads $12m round for Anyline

Harriet Matthews
17 January 2020

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Anyline, an Austria-based provider of optical character recognition (OCR) software, has raised $12m in a series-A round led by Project A.

The round also saw participation from existing investors, including Senovo, Push Ventures, iSeed Ventures, the Gernot Langes-Swarovski Foundation and Johann Hansmann.

Anyline intends to use the fresh capital to double its employee headcount. Along with the announcement of the financing round, it has opened a new US office in Boston and established a US subsidiary.

Project A deployed equity from its latest vehicle, Project A Ventures III, which held a final close in September 2019 on €180m, as reported by Unquote. The fund writes equity cheques of €500,000-5m and will invest up to €12m in a single company.

Project A partner Uwe Horstmann told Unquote that, out of a group of potential new investors from the UK, the US and beyond, Anyline viewed Project A as having the best understanding of the potential that mobile OCR has for future growth.

Horstmann also told Unquote that Project A was introduced to the company by an existing investor. The VC subsequently did their due diligence and closed the process in approximately six weeks.

Previous funding
In February 2016, Anyline held a €1.5m funding round backed by iSeed Ventures, the Gernot Langes-Swarovski Foundation and angel investors Johann Hansmann, Bernhard Niesner and Lukas Püspök. The company also launched a software development kit that allows users to integrate Anyline into their own mobile applications as a third-party framework.

In February 2019, Push Ventures and Senovo led a $2m funding round for Anyline.

Company
Anyline provides AI-based optical character recognition services for printed documents, including licence plates, ID, utility metres and serial numbers. Its client base comprises 150 businesses, including Pepsi and Toyota.

Anyline has a headcount of 50 and was founded in 2013. It reported a headcount of 21 in 2016 and 30 in 2019. It is based in Vienna and generated sales of more than $1m in 2019.

People
Anyline – Lukas Kinigadner (CEO); Andreas Greilhuber (chief operating officer).
Project A – Uwe Horstmann (partner).

Advisers
Equity – Brandl & Talos (legal); Herbst Kinsky Rechtsanwälte (legal).