Heidelberg, 16. September 2021, Heidelberg-based startup Paretos has successfully closed a €3.5 million seed funding round with lead investor LEA Partners. Founded in 2020, the company offers an AI platform for forecasting and optimization. The fresh capital will flow into team and product development.
Data science without access barriers
In the digitalized business world, data, key figures and measured values are the decisive requirements for long-term success. Artificial intelligence is indispensable for processing the growing amounts of information. The vast majority of executives (84%) have also recognized that they cannot achieve business growth without scaling AI systems. However, older established data analytics tools need to be operated manually by data experts and many businesses in Germany cannot access these skills and resources – either due to cost and time constraints or because data science talent is hard to find.
paretos closes this gap: The Heidelberg-based tech start-up makes analysis processes for companies as easily accessible and integrable as an email program. With the help of AI-based software as a service tool, innovative SMEs, dynamic start-ups and large corporations can carry out extensive data analyses without prior knowledge or the expertise of data science specialists.
To this end, the young company was able to close seed financing of €3,5 million at the beginning of September. The main contributor is B2B tech investor, LEA Ventures, who also specialize in AI companies. “For most companies, AI is still an abstract concept. It often takes a lot of time and expert knowledge to introduce solutions but we were very impressed by the customer feedback and how easy it is to deploy paretos – a no-brainer for customer,” says Nils Seele of LEA Partners. “We are excited to be part of the data science democratization. Together with a strong angel consortium, we want to support Thorsten and Fabian in their vision to become the number one in Prediction & Optimisation as a service.”
Complete Processautomation
Targeted optimization by the paretos algorithm makes companies more efficient and competitive. Among other things, the underlying software is capable of fully automating three of the most complex challenges in the business and marketing context:
Thorsten Heilig, Co-Founder and CEO:
“With our innovative approach, we want to enable teams and organizations to independently manage dynamic and complex problems. Our goal is to democratize the entire data science process so that every company can evaluate its data as easily as possible and make strategically targeted business decisions.”
Innovative optimization algorithm
At the heart of the software is the “Socrates” optimization algorithm that was especially developed for dealing with highly complex models. It is based on several years of research at the Munich University of Applied Sciences and is recognized and validated worldwide by, among others, the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Developed further by paretos, its performance outpaces even state-of-the-art algorithms from tech giants like Facebook.
Fabian Rang, Co-Founder & CTO:
“The challenge for the algorithm is the number of possible criteria and their interactions: To optimize complex business processes, thousands of scenarios have to be created and analyzed. Only through high-performance machine learning are companies able to make the truly best decision for themselves and their situation.”
To this end, the young company was able to close seed financing of €3.5 million at the beginning of September. The main contributor is B2B tech investor, LEA Partners, who also specializes in AI companies.
Nils Seele of LEA Partners:
“For most companies, AI is still an abstract concept. It often takes a lot of time and expert knowledge to introduce solutions but we were very impressed by the customer feedback and how easy it is to deploy paretos – a no-brainer for customer. We are excited to be part of the data science democratization. Together with a strong angel consortium, we are thrilled to support Thorsten and Fabian in their vision to become the number one in Prediction & Optimisation as a service.”
paretos was founded in mid-2020 by Fabian Rang (machine learning & AI expert) and Thorsten Heilig (digital entrepreneur, former COO moovel/REACH NOW). Their mission: data science to go. Using the latest machine learning methods, the Heidelberg-based start- up supports companies to exploit business and marketing potential in the best possible way without having to rely on data science expertize.
Since its launch in early 2021, successful medium-sized companies and multinational stock- listed corporations, such as Accenture, have begun relying on the paretos platform. The goal of the founding team is to become the number one in Prediction & Optimization as a service for global corporations, innovative SMEs and fast growing start-ups.
LEA Partners is an entrepreneurial-minded multi-stage venture capital and private equity firm investing in growth technology companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. With currently EUR 260 million under Management and operating out of Karlsruhe, one of Europe's largest technology clusters, its mission is to fund and support ambitious founders and executives by leveraging them with practical, hands-on growth expertise to achieve market leadership.