Fluent, a data analytics platform transforming the way decision-makers access and use business data, has announced the close of a €6.9 million seed investment round led by Hoxton Ventures and Tiferes Ventures. The new investment will be used to accelerate the development of Fluent’s groundbreaking technology and expand its team of AI and machine learning experts across Europe.
An AI-powered data analyst founded in 2021, Fluent enables non-technical team members to ask questions directly of their data in plain English, getting insights in seconds, and saving data teams from the pain of manually answering ad hoc data requests.
Robert Van Den Bergh, CEO at Fluent, said: “On average, 40% of a data team’s time is spent answering questions from across their business. A lot of these questions are easy to answer for the data team but take them away from the deeper, more strategic analysis that can be transformative to their business. With Fluent’s natural language interface, we’re helping team members self-serve on their data questions.”
Whether it is a question about a particular client, a new feature launched or the financial performance of a division, Fluent’s AI is there to answer it and in the last two years, Fluent has landed flagship clients, including Bain & Company, to democratize data accessibility.
Ian Weber, Partner at Bain & Company, commented: “Fluent’s platform has helped us leverage LLMs to interrogate and deliver insights from large complex datasets. Fluent allows our non-technical users to quickly get the answers they need efficiently and accurately, especially for questions too complex or specific for pre-built data dashboards. We’re excited to explore how Fluent can help our clients better access data and insights in the future.”
Cameron Whitehead, CTO at Fluent, added: “Our clients have adopted business intelligence tools, like Tableau and Looker, expecting their non-technical team members to interrogate data on their own but have quickly found that these tools are too technical, resulting in only a small percentage of team members actually using them. Fluent is built to cater to those team members that aren’t data experts.”
Since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, organisations have been testing the technology on initiatives to see where they can improve productivity and analysing Excel files has been one of the more popular applications. However, enterprise-ready solutions that can scale with organisations are still nascent and concerns around accuracy and trust limit adoption. Fluent bridges this gap, bringing an enterprise-ready solution that data teams can curate, govern and trust with ease.
Charles Seely, Partner at Hoxton Ventures, commented: “In a data-driven world, the current approach to data analysis is selling businesses short, creating permanent bottlenecks in their organisations that slow everyone down and hamper decision-making. Fluent’s approach is not just innovative, it’s urgently needed, and we’re excited to be part of their journey in reshaping how businesses interact with data.”
Clark Valberg, Managing Partner of Tiferes Ventures and Co-Founder of InVision, added: “Fluent enables an entirely new paradigm of collaborative intelligence by democratizing real-time access to data-driven insights at every organisational altitude. I believe this is the most significant strategic and cultural evolution happening inside the modern enterprise.”
