Advent leads $220m series-D for Shift at $1bn valuation

Avenir, Accel, Bessemer Venture Partners, General Catalyst and Iris Capital also took part in the round.

This funding brings the total capital raised by the company to $320m and its market valuation to more than $1bn.

Shift intends to use the fresh capital to expand its presence in North America, Europe and Asia. In the US, the company plans to further penetrate the property and casualty insurance markets, as well as expand into the health insurance sector. The funding will also be used to drive R&D efforts in the creation of new automation and optimisation tools.

Shift is the sixth growth equity investment inked by Advent this year. The firm's previous technology investments in the insurance vertical include CCC, a SaaS platform for the property and casualty insurance economy; and Transunion, a provider of credit information and risk management to businesses and individual consumers.

The French venture capital market has been very active in 2021, recording 12 large rounds, which raised aggregate capital of more than $1.5bn.

Notable deals inked in 2021 included a €185m series-D round for health insurance app Alan, which brought the company's valuation to €1.4bn. Coatue, Dragoneer and Exor also took part in the round, alongside existing investors Index Ventures, Ribbit Capital and Temasek.

Another large round was raised in France by online secondhand fashion marketplace Vestiaire Collective, which collected €178m from Tiger Global Management and French luxury group Kering. The round saw participation from previous backers Eurazeo, BPI France, Vitruvian Partners, Fidelity International, Korelya Capital, Luxury Tech Fund, Condé Nast and Vestiaire CEO Max Bittner.

Furthermore, KKR led a €100m series-C funding round for France-based Ornikar, a specialist in online driver training and road awareness. Existing investors Idinvest, BPI France, Elaia Partners, Brighteye Ventures and H14 took part in the round, which brought the total capital raised by the company to €146m.

Previous funding
Elaia Partners and Iris Capital led a $1.8m seed funding round for Shift in December 2014.

Accel Partners invested $10m in a series-A round for the company in May 2016, with participation from Elaia and Iris.

Subsequently, Accel and General Catalyst co-led a $28m series-B funding round for the company in October 2017. Previous backers Elaia and Iris also participated.

More recently, the company raised $60m in a series-C round led by Bessemer, with participation from existing investors Accel, General Catalyst, Iris and Elaia.

Company
Established in 2014, Shift is a developer of AI-powered software for the insurance industry.

The company initially specialised in fraud detection and claims automation software. It recently expanded its product offering with the launch of an insurance suite that enables insurers to apply AI-based decision automation and optimisation technology to an array of critical processes across the policy lifecycle, including underwriting, subrogation and compliance.

Shift serves 100 customers in 25 countries and has analysed nearly two billion claims to date. The company is headquartered in Paris with further offices in Singapore, Hong Kong, Madrid, London and Zurich.

People
Advent Tech – Thomas Weisman (director).
Shift Technology – Jeremy Jawish (CEO, co-founder).

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