MOLOCO Closes $150 Million Series C

<p><span class&equals;"xn-location"><strong>REDWOOD CITY<&sol;strong> &&num;8211&semi;<&sol;span>&&num;8211&semi; <u>MOLOCO<&sol;u> a developer of machine learning and growth solutions for mobile app marketers and e-commerce companies&comma; has raised <span class&equals;"xn-money">&dollar;150 million<&sol;span> in Series C funding to bring sophisticated&comma; transparent machine learning models to businesses throughout the world&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The round was led by Tiger Global Management with participation from existing investors&period; MOLOCO has now raised a total of <span class&equals;"xn-money">&dollar;200 million<&sol;span> to date&period; Its latest funding gives the company a <span class&equals;"xn-money">&dollar;1&period;5 billion<&sol;span> valuation&period; MOLOCO says it has grown in excess of 100 percent annually and has surpassed an annual net revenue run-rate of more than <span class&equals;"xn-money">&dollar;100 million<&sol;span>&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&&num;8220&semi;Until now&comma; only the world&&num;8217&semi;s largest technology companies have benefited from the power of exceptional machine learning&comma;&&num;8221&semi; said Ikkjin Ahn&comma; co-founder and CEO of MOLOCO&period; &&num;8220&semi;Our goal is to make machine learning models accessible to more businesses so that they can leverage their first-party customer data for better user acquisition&comma; customer engagement&comma; monetization and growth&period; As consumer privacy restrictions evolve and become more stringent&comma; it is increasingly critical for businesses to activate their own customer data in order to inform and optimize business decisions&period;&&num;8221&semi;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>MOLOCO was founded in 2013 by Ikkjin Ahn&comma; an early machine learning engineer at YouTube&comma; part of Google&period; Mr&period; Ahn was a pioneer of machine learning at YouTube and Android&comma; where he built significant parts of the company&&num;8217&semi;s data and machine learning infrastructure&period; He founded MOLOCO with the vision of making sophisticated machine learning algorithms available as a cloud service to a wide variety of businesses&comma; industries and use cases&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>MOLOCO Cloud is a Demand Side Platform &lpar;DSP&rpar; that enables advertisers to programmatically purchase ad inventory across the mobile app ecosystem&period; The DSP is purpose-built for performance advertisers and leverages the company&&num;8217&semi;s machine learning engine&comma; first-party data&comma; and contextual signals to optimize ad spend&period; MOLOCO Cloud uniquely provides marketers with the performance benefits of machine learning combined with full transparency&comma; in contrast to the walled gardens that dominate ad budgets&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>MOLOCO Cloud has been rapidly adopted by mobile gaming companies who deploy quantitative marketing strategies as their primary channel of growth&period; As the strategies developed by mobile gaming companies have become more popular with disruptors across industries&comma; MOLOCO has quickly grown its revenue from e-commerce&comma; social media&comma; personal finance&comma; and direct-to-consumer commerce companies&period; &&num;8220&semi;Most machine learning models can deliver accurate predictions for only one industry taxonomy&comma;&&num;8221&semi; said Mr&period; Ahn&period; &&num;8220&semi;Our deep learning neural network models and data infrastructure were designed from day one to be flexible enough to ingest any type of commercial data and make exceptionally accurate predictions&period; Our growth and performance in diversified industries demonstrates the depth and flexibility of our machine learning platform&period;&&num;8221&semi;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>MOLOCO&&num;8217&semi;s next major release&comma; the Retail Media Platform&comma; is currently in beta with select customers&period; The Retail Media platform enables e-commerce companies to leverage their customers&&num;8217&semi; first-party data to create new revenue streams&comma; including sponsored ads powered by MOLOCO&&num;8217&semi;s product recommendation engine&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>MOLOCO currently serves more than 13 billion ad impressions monthly and reaches nearly 10 billion global devices through 5&period;58 million apps&comma; including those from developers such as King Digital&comma; Playrix&comma; Netmarble&comma; and others&period; MOLOCO employs more than 200 people in eight offices throughout the world&comma; with more than 60 percent of its team in engineering and data science — an unusually high percentage compared to similar companies&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;