Tech
Alexis Ohanian’s Initialized Capital backed an 18-year-old Y Combinator alumnus after seeing this pitch deck
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- Y Combinator graduate Depict.ai has just raised a 25 million SEK ($2.9 million) funding round.
- The funding was led by Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian’s fund Initialized Capital and Nordic VC heavyweights Northzone and EQT Ventures.
- Depict’s cofounder Oliver Edholm is only 18 years old and left school at 16 to become an AI researcher at Singapore’s National University.
- Check out the pitch deck below.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Sweden’s growing list of top tech talent might have a new name.
18-year-old Y Combinator graduate Oliver Edholm has landed 25 million SEK ($2.9 million) in funding for his startup Depict.ai.
The round was led by Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian’s fund Initialized Capital, as well as Nordic VC heavyweights Northzone and EQT Ventures.
The company, started earlier in 2020, provides AI and deep learning services to e-commerce sites in Edholm’s native Sweden to help them try and compete with Amazon. It does this by improving e-commerce sites’ algorithms around, for example, product recommendations.
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“Smaller e-commerce players get crushed by Amazon because they don’t have as much data,” Edholm told Business Insider in an interview. “The specific issue we want to solve is how to bring equal opportunity to e-commerce sites so as to remove the data barrier for them.”
Edholm and his cofounder Anton Osika took part in the first ever virtual-only Y Combinator cohort this year, but the teen is no stranger to the world of tech. Edholm, recently likened to Spotify founder Daniel Ek, quit school at 16 to become an AI researcher at Singapore’s National University. Before that, the teenager had been building apps and bots and also spent time working at one of the world’s most valuable fintechs, Klarna, as a 15-year-old.
Ohanian reached out to Edholm a week before Y Combinator’s virtual demo day in late August about funding the company, with Northzone and EQT following shortly after, Edholm said.
The funding was completed over video calls with investors and also includes participation from notable angels including e-scooter startup Voi’s founder and CEO Fredrik Hjelm and Kry founder Johannes Schildt.
The funds will be used to expand the company’s tech, hire a head of sales and add more AI engineers for R&D purposes. “We see e-commerce platforms as being like Ferraris without the fuel,” Edholm added. “They need to do more with the data they have so we are like a more efficient AI fuel.” The company has around 21 customers already.
Check out the pitch deck Depict.ai used below:
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