Verdane invests €9.5m in Freespee

Oscar Geen
25 July 2018

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Norwegian private equity firm Verdane Capital has invested тЌ9.5m in London-based enterprise software company Freespee.

The GP drew capital for the transaction from Verdane Capital IX, a SEK 3bn fund that held a final close in July 2016. Like its predecessors, Verdane IX makes a mixture of primary and secondary investments in portfolios and single unlisted assets.

Freespee will use the fresh capital to accelerate its R&D in artificial intelligence. It expects to double the size of its engineering team by the end of the year and will be hiring across all five of its European offices.

Verdane's Pål Malmros will join Freespee's board alongside representatives from Ventech, Inventure and Sunstone Capital.

Previous funding
Finnish VC firm Inventure invested €800,000 in Freespee in 2009 and a further €1.1m in February 2011.

Inventure was joined by Sunstone in 2012 to provide a further €3.3m in equity funding, and both VC firms reinvested in a €9.25m round along with Silicon Valley Bank and Natixis Private Equity.

Company
Freespee was founded in Uppsala, Sweden, in 2009 and is now headquartered in London. The company's software analyses the conversations a firm's marketing team has with its customers, allowing users to monitor interaction with prospective customers across communications on multiple platforms. Freespee's current customer base includes Lloyds Bank, eBay, Bupa and Fiat Chrysler. It employs 80 people across its five offices in Barcelona, London, Paris, Uppsala and Düsseldorf.

People
Verdane Capital – Pål Malmros (partner).
Freespee – Anne de Kerckhove (CEO).