UK-based Eigen Technologies, a natural language processing startup, has completed a €4.5 million investment from ING Ventures that follows on from its €3.3 million Series B round in November 2019. This brings the total funds raised by Eigen in its Series B round to €37.6 million, and brings the overall funds raised to over €53.7 million.
Eigen Technologies, founded in 2014, automates the extraction and classification of information from documents. Based in London and New York, Eigen’s Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology employs state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms to recognize patterns in text and give accurate answers to unique questions. This helps companies make informed business decisions – driving down costs, finding opportunities, calculating risks, and meeting regulatory requirements. Eigen’s NLP technology is already used by over 25% of global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) as well as major asset managers, hedge funds, law firms, and insurers.
This new investment is a part of a broader strategic partnership between the two companies that combines Eigen’s NLP technology with ING’s expertise in the application of machine learning to financial services. Eigen’s NLP technology is already used by ING in areas such as LIBOR replacement and loan operations. By working together, both companies aim to speed up the development of use cases in areas such as trade finance and SME banking. With Eigen, ING will work on establishing best-in-class NLP models fully tailored to the financial industry’s needs for data extraction.
ING is the second strategic investor that Eigen has brought on board, alongside Goldman Sachs, another Eigen client who co-led Eigen’s Series A round in 2018.
Eigen Technologies Co-founder & CEO Dr Lewis Z. Liu said: “Since our foundation, one of Eigen’s greatest strengths has been the deep and strategic relationships we have with our clients and partners. In the years we have worked with ING we have found them to have some of the most advanced thinking in the market on the application of machine learning in financial services, something that comes from their fantastic innovation culture. To have ING join us as both an investor and strategic partner is a great privilege.”
Benoît Legrand, ING’s Chief Innovation Officer and CEO of ING Ventures said: “Eigen offers a strategic capability in the intelligent operations domain, deployed in use cases across retail as well as wholesale banking. This partnership will allow both companies to work closer together when implementing use cases through data and process analysis, so as to accelerate Eigen’s advantage in NLP as well as ING’s digital transformation.”
