A company that uses artificial intelligence to convert data into usable documents has completed a seed funding round led by TwoFour54, the Abu Dhabi-based free trade zone that hosts media firms.
TwoFour54 announced that the company, Narrativa, had received backing from media companies and business angels in the United Arab Emirates, the United States and Europe.
The company’s technology can automatically transform data sets into “narrative content”, such as reports or product descriptions, and it is the first firm to be able to automatically generate content in Arabic, according to the statement.
After participating in the Flat6 Labs Accelerator programme within the TwoFour54 media zone in Abu Dhabi, and the Next Media Accelerator in Hamburg, Narrativa said that funds raised from this latest round of investment will go towards team expansion, sales and marketing, and technology development to further enhance the evolution of the company’s proprietary AI technology.
The company currently sells in the Europe, the UAE and Saudi Arabia but is looking to expand into the wider Middle East market and to new sectors, including financial services and oil and gas.
“The company is at the forefront of natural language generation technology, and this latest round of funding shows strong confidence in Narrativa’s growth and future prospects,” said David Llorente, CEO of Narrativa. “The rise of big data, the rapid development of computing capabilities and the evolution of AI are revolutionising the way we produce and consume content.”
He added, “Narrativa’s AI technology helps companies in the media, e-commerce and enterprise reporting space to exponentially increase the amount of content generated, significantly reduce costs, and develop new revenue streams.”
Maryam AlMheiri, CEO of twofour54 and Abu Dhabi’s Media Zone Authority, said that its investment in Narrativa “is in line with our vision to champion the creative community and foster the production of content”.
She said that less than 2 percent of online content is in Arabic, despite the fact that the Middle East and North African region has a young, tech-savvy population with some of the highest rates of social media consumption in the world.
