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MMC Ventures is betting big on AI as it leads another funding round in the space

London-based venture capital (VC) firm MMC Ventures has contributed to another artificial intelligence (AI) funding round after leading an additional £1.2m tranche of funding in StoryStream.

The Brighton-based content firm, which utilises AI to manage and deploy ‘content experiences’ for brands including BMW and Coca-Cola, has raised the cash in addition to its £1.8m Series A round that it closed last April.

For MMC the investment marks another bet on the potential of AI technology after it backed Signal Media, the Whitechapel AI startup that’s battling fake news, in December.

Commenting on StoryStream’s platform, Jon Coker, who is co-managing partner at MMC, said “Marketers are dealing with ever increasing amounts of content related to their brand and there are few enterprise tools that have the ability to manage brand and customer content at scale, in real-time, across multiple channels.

“We believe this problem is well suited to AI and StoryStream’s offering and we are excited to be backing StoryStream’s continued commitment to it.”

StoryStream’s funding round has also coincided with the hiring of Dr Janet Bastiman as its chief science officer who will head up a new team based in the firm’s London office.

Dr Bastiman, who has a Phd in computational neuroscience as well as extensive C-level experience, will help to steer the content marketing company’s AI approach and help to shape its technical strategy.

Alex Vaidya, chief executive and co-founder at StoryStream, explained how the company looks to help marketers leverage AI to ‘improve operations’ and ‘boost revenue’.

He commented: “We wanted to make that an accessible reality for marketers. It was important for us to have talent in-house in order to design unique, specialist technology that can keep up with the demands of our clients. Original AI technology will become a game changer for the business.”

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