Cognism raises $12m to expand across Europe

Cognism has announced it has raised $12 million in funding led by AXA Venture Partners and as an extension to the $10 million already raised with PeakSpan Capital.

Since that last funding round, Cognism has opened an office in New York and expanded its three offices in the UK, Europe and Asia. The company also enhanced its AI expertise with James Hodson, former Head of AI at Bloomberg, joining as Chief Science Officer.

In the five years since it was founded, Cognism has grown to become one of the leading B2B data providers in Europe. The introduction of the GDPR in May 2018 provided Cognism with the opportunity to build a leading compliant product.

The company has continued to grow over 150% each year and expects that to continue. Cognism’s B2B lead generation tools are trusted by over 500 clients internationally, across industries such as sales, marketing, recruitment and technology.

James Isilay, Cognism’s CEO said:“I’m delighted that AXA Venture Partners is investing in Cognism. It’s a ringing endorsement of how hard everyone in the company has worked to make us Europe’s leading go-to-market data provider.

“At Cognism, we have always wanted to do things differently, from providing innovative solutions to our clients’ lead generation challenges to remaining committed to full compliance with the GDPR. No other business in our space can boast of these achievements. Our partnership with AXA ensures that Cognism is a debt-free company and affords us a short runway to profitability in 2021.”

AXA Venture Partners has a proud history of investing in great entrepreneurs and outstanding companies. Imran Akram, General Partner at AXA, commented: “Cognism’s integrated data and software platform solves major pain points in the B2B marketing and sales workflow and it didn’t take long for us to get excited about what the team have built.

“We are excited to help in this next phase of international expansion and partnerships and it’s exactly in our core focus stage of growth.”

Cognism intends to use the AXA funding to open more offices across Europe and deepen its localised regulatory expertise; this will help the company to fulfil its goal of setting the global standard for data compliance in 2020 and beyond.