New Financing Solidifies Company’s Growth Plan and Vision to Protect Brands and Consumers from Online IP Infringements
BARCELONA, SPAIN (April 3, 2019) – Red Points, a global leader in online IP infringement detection and removal, announced today that it has closed $38 million in funding, bringing the company’s total capital raised to $64 million and cementing its global footprint in the online brand protection space. The round was led by Summit Partners, with additional participation from existing investors Northzone, Mangrove, Eight Roads Ventures and Banco Sabadell.
“Brands have never been more vulnerable to the issues of online counterfeiting, piracy and distribution fraud,” said Laura Urquizu, CEO and Partner of Red Points. “This growing threat makes it nearly impossible for a company to protect its online assets effectively without full visibility into its brand’s online presence. This investment round from Summit Partners will help to strengthen Red Points’ position as a global leader in addressing the ever-growing, rapidly evolving problem of online brand abuse. With this new funding, we plan to further expand our technology and global footprint with the goal of empowering brands worldwide to seamlessly protect their valuable assets online.”
The continued growth in global e-commerce has driven an acceleration in online counterfeiting, shining a bright light on the need for IP infringement detection. The International Chamber of Commerce estimates that the global economic value of counterfeiting and piracy could reach $4.2 trillion by 2022 and put 5.4 million legitimate jobs at risk over that time period. Red Points’ AI-driven technology takes a holistic approach to brand protection by providing comprehensive visibility into the different types of infringements negatively impacting a company’s reputation across black, grey and white markets, offering a more complete, real time protection for a company’s IP assets.
Red Points’ platform leverages artificial intelligence to continuously connect a targeted web crawler to a rules-based rights management database that learns from each account’s history and improves the level of protection over time. Red Points’ proprietary software currently removes hundreds of thousands incidents of illegal products and content from the web monthly, across over 100 online marketplaces and social networks. Red Points’ solutions are used by over 550 brands worldwide including Bang & Olufsen, MVMT and DOPE. As a result of its successful expansion, the company’s growth rate exceeded 100% for 2018.
“Brands around the world are facing an unprecedented rise in online IP infringement. Red Points is a category-leader, offering an intelligent and robust technology platform that is purpose-built to address this growing pain point,” said Steffan Peyer, Principal at Summit Partners. “With differentiated technology and a strong leadership team, we believe that Red Points is well positioned to accelerate its growth and further solidify its leadership in the Brand Intelligence market.”
Red Points expanded the brand protection offering on its platform last year with the launch of a new seller tracking solution to help brands worldwide gain greater visibility into their online partner activities, using state-of-the-art technology. The company also expanded its global footprint by opening their US headquarters in New York.
About Summit Partners
Founded in 1984, Summit Partners is a global alternative investment firm that is currently managing more than $19 billion in capital dedicated to growth equity, fixed income and public equity opportunities. Summit invests across growth sectors of the economy and has invested in more than 475 companies in technology, healthcare and other growth industries. These companies have completed more than 140 public equity offerings, and more than 190 have been acquired through strategic mergers and sales. Notable technology and software companies financed by Summit Partners include Avast, Darktrace, FLEETCOR, HelpSystems, Infor, Mi9 Retail, OnRobot, Perforce Software, RELEX Solutions, Smartsheet, Trintech and Uber. Summit maintains offices in North America and Europe, and invests in companies around the world. For more information, please see www.summitpartners.com or on Twitter at @SummitPartners.
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