CrowdRiff Picks Up $9 Million Series A Round

October 4, 2018

One more Toronto-based AI company is finding major success through a brand new funding round.

CrowdRiff has unveiled a new $9 million USD Series A led by Leaders Fund, a VC firm based in Toronto and Atlanta. High Alpha Capital, Gibraltar & Company, and BDC Capital also participated in the funding round.

Powered by AI, CrowdRiff is a visual content marketing platform designed for tourism and travel brands. The platform helps combine content delivery and discovery with asset management, allowing marketers at tourism companies to find and distribute the best possible visuals for a campaign, site or project.

“Visuals are the language of modern-day travelers,” said Dan Holowack, CEO and co-founder of CrowdRiff. “Around the world, it’s visual content that most heavily influences where people choose to travel and how they spend their money while abroad. We’re thrilled to accelerate our innovation and expansion in the travel sector and further enable travel brands and their agencies to effectively use visuals to attract and engage people throughout the travel buyer journey.”

So far, CrowdRiff has processed more than 500 million images through their platform, working with brands such as Destination BC, Colorado Tourism Office, CityPASS and Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions. In total, CrowdRiff works with over 500 travel and tourism brands in 24 countries.

“In a short period of time, CrowdRiff sourced content is reaching millions of travelers every month who are at the beginning of their trip discovery process, and is resulting in more travel bookings for its customers,” said Gideon Hayden, co-founder and Partner at Leaders Fund. “The team has a relentless focus on customer satisfaction and enabling travel brands to tell their stories in a vastly more compelling way. We are excited to support them on this journey.”

Travel is still an incredibly fast-growing industry, accounting for over $1.6 trillion in worldwide spending last year. Visuals play a large part in convincing travellers to choose a specific destination, and CrowdRiff has found that their platform and visuals can increase ad conversions by up to 300 per cent.

CrowdRiff last raised funding in 2016 when they secured a $2 million seed round.