AI startup Memory has raised $5 million in a funding round led by Concentric and Investinor, with participation from existing investor SNÖ Ventures. This brings the total funding amount raise by Memory to $6 million.
Founded in 2013 by the Oslo-based entrepreneur Mathias Mikkelsen, Memory seeks to create AI-enabled tools which solve the abuses of time in the modern workplace by giving humans “digital superpowers”. Memory’s first product, Timely, is a fully automatic time tracking tool. With the addition of a powerful AI, the product quickly became a service-industry staple and is currently used by more than 4,000 paying businesses across 160 countries. It seeks to salvage the time businesses lose to time tracking each day, by automatically recording everything employees work on and creating accurate time sheets on their behalf.
Where Timely created a complete “virtual memory” of time data, Memory now seeks to build tools which improve the quality of time; freeing space for cognitively-enriching “deep work” and helping businesses use time more effectively. This new funding will allow Memory to double its current 30-strong team, enabling them to build the first of these tools, as well as refine Timely’s AI model and accelerate international growth.
On a more personal level, the $5 million crowns a remarkable four years for Mikkelsen. Turning down an opportunity at Facebook to start Memory – and selling his apartment to bootstrap it in the process – the pace of change has been exceptional for the young Norwegian, who still leads design and development for all product releases.
Mathias Mikkelsen, the CEO and Founder of Memory stated: “As the one finite resource we all share, it’s imperative to definitively solve all the problems that steal time away from us. If Memory can build tools which effectively hand people back a 25th hour each day, we’ll have gone a huge way towards achieving that. But if we can then use those tools to actively show people how to get more from that time, we’ll be offering unprecedented power to actually control the value of time itself.”
Kjartan Rist, Partner at Concentric, commented: “Memory’s growth and proven product-market fit mean it is well aligned with Concentric’s expertise and ambitions, and we can add huge value in areas such as expanding internationally, hiring great talent, securing the right partnerships and targeting the enterprise space. Memory is now all set to scale and we look forward to playing an active role in the next exciting phase of the business.”