Partech, Alven in £10.5m series-B round for Akeneo

Alice Tchernookova
21 March 2017

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Partech Ventures and Alven Capital have led a £10.5m series-B round for French-American startup Akeneo, a provider of open-source product information management software.

Partech Ventures acted as lead investor in the round, while Alven joined as co-investor. It is the second time Alven has invested in the company, after taking part in a $2.4m round in 2014.

Akeneo will use the fresh capital to accelerate its international development and double its team, both in sales and R&D. The startup claims to be generating 60% of its turnover abroad at present, with offices in Boston and Düsseldorf opened last year; it said it would now target London and the UK.

Alven recently took part in a €12m round for French food delivery service Frichti alongside Idinvest Partners. Partech, meanwhile, contributed to a $23m series-B for Amsterdam-based online flower delivery service Bloomon last month.

Last year, Partech held a final close on its seed-only fund Partech Entrepreneur II with €100m in commitments, a few months after closing the late-stage technology-specialist fund Partech Growth on its €400m hard-cap.

Previous funding
Akeneo has previously received two rounds of funding. In 2012, early-stage investors Kima Ventures and Nestadio provided a €350,000 seed round. The following year, Alven led a second $2.4m round of funding, investing from the €120m Alven Capital IV fund.

The current transaction marks the third round of funding for Akeneo, and brings the total raised by the startup to around $15m.

Company
Founded in 2012 by France- and US-based e-commerce specialists, Akeneo is a developer of open-source software specialising in product information management. Akeneo claims that its software helps improve product data and catalogue management, enabling users to centralise, synthesise, translate and control the quality of their product information. The startup's clients include large brands such as Carrefour, Kurmi Tea, Lancaster, Adidas, Kurt Geiger, Nuxe and Samsung.

Based in Nantes, Akeneo has a network of more than 2,000 developers and established partnerships with businesses based in France, Germany, the US, Australia and the Netherlands.

People
Akeneo – Frédéric de Gombert (CEO/co-founder).
Partech Ventures – Reza Malekzadeh (general partner).
Alven Capital – Jeremy Uzan (partner).