Anyline, a leading Vienna-based provider of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology working with Toyota, IBM and PepsiCo has raised $12 million in Series A funding to help it to enable more businesses to digitize the real-world.
Leading the round is Project A, the Berlin-based Operational VC, supported by Anyline’s existing investors, including Senovo, Johann ‘Hansi’ Hansmann, and the Gernot Langes-Swarovski Foundation.
Businesses are using Anyline technology to scan and collect analog information, such as identity documents, serial numbers and utility meters using any standard mobile device. This brings significant savings in terms of time and resources and improves data-quality for businesses by eliminating manual data entry.
This new capital will primarily be used to double the headcount within Anyline, and to open a US headquarters in Boston in early 2020.
Lukas Kinigadner, CEO and co-founder of Anyline says: “As businesses move to an increasingly virtual world, it is vital they have access to advanced technologies that enable them to digitize previously analog mediums. We are proud to say European-born technology is helping businesses across the world to reduce the errors, inefficiencies and frustrations that come with manual input.”
Uwe Horstmann, a partner with the lead funder Project A says: “Anyline offers a superior solution in the computer vision business, valuable to both the public sector and private customers. Apart from their reliable state-of-the-art technology, our decision to invest in Anyline is very much based on their amazing team. We are proud and happy to support Anyline financially as well as with our operational services.”
The firm has established Anyline Inc. in the US, and has hired Bryan Boatner, the former Global Sales Director of Cognex Corporation, as the company’s new VP of Sales and Business Development.
Boatner says: “I am very excited to be joining Anyline, one of the most dynamic tech ‘scaleups’ in Europe today as it enters the US market. From my experience in machine and computer vision, I see huge growth potential for Anyline across many different industries, from law enforcement to retail, smart factories and transport, to name only a few. We will be moving fast to build and establish our new US team in 2020.”