Tech
A Tencent cofounder invested in air purifier startup Aeris’ $3.3 million round after seeing this pitch deck
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- Swiss startup Aeris Health raised a $3.3 million Series A round in August led by investment funds PreAngel and Sarona Ventures, Tencent cofounder Vic Lee, and Tinder cofounder Justin Mateen.
- Demand for Aeris’ AI-powered air purifiers has surged as a result of the pandemic, with the company claiming 800% growth in the last year compared to the year before.
- Aeris claims its filters can remove 99.95% of particles the size of the coronavirus, reducing the risk of transmission.
- We got an exclusive look at the pitch deck it used to bring new investors on board.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Swiss startup Aeris Health, which produces AI-powered air purifiers, raised $3.3 million in Series A funding in August.
The round was led by investment funds PreAngel and Sarona Ventures, as well as high-profile angel investors Vic Lee, the cofounder of Chinese tech giant Tencent, and Tinder cofounder Justin Mateen.
Aeris says its AI-powered air purifiers use sensors to gather data on the room size, users’ personal habits, and the air quality to remove 99.95% of pollutants. It does these using an efficient filter that targets even the smallest pollutants, such as virus particles, but says this doesn’t compromise on air flow.
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“This is a metric that has become also very important now for infection control. How many times can I recirculate the indoor air and how many times can I push it through a high efficiency filter?” says CEO Pierre Bi.
The startup, which describes itself as a “Dyson for health”, says it has seen a surge in demand in recent months, growing 800% over the year to September compared to the same period the year before. This has been the result of a new go-to-market strategy in the US and Europe, as well as a surge in demand for air purifiers due to the pandemic, says Bi.
“Air quality indoors is a problem, not only in areas where you have bad outside air quality, but also in places where there’s a lot of pollutants created indoors,” he says. “That has become even more apparent now with the outbreak of COVID. Air quality is tightly linked for example to the risk of infections.”
Aeris says it is one of the only air purifiers that is proven to remove feline coronavirus from the air. Its filters capture 99.95% of particles the size of coronavirus and break them down using a proprietary zinc-based coating in the purifier, according to Bi.
But, there is not enough information to say whether using Aeris’ air purifiers removes the risk of capturing coronavirus, as there are still questions about the concentration of the virus that can cause infection.
Aeris air purifiers are currently available in a number of Asian markets, as well as France, Mexico, and the US, where the company has partnerships with big retailers such as Best Buy. The raise will allow it to invest in marketing and to expand beyond air purifiers into other health-related areas such as water, nutrition, and sleep.
Here’s the pitch deck that Aeris used to bring new investors on board: