Qortex, which uses AI to target ads in streaming TV, online video, and video games, said Monday it had raised a $6 million Series A round, led by GFT Ventures.
It plans to use the funds to staff up with business development professionals as it makes a big push to increase its client count in 2024. Other contributors to the round included Silicon Road Ventures.
The new round brings Qortex’s total funding to $10 million.
About two-thirds of the company’s 26 full timers are engineers, said Qortex cofounder Zack Rosenberg, and he hopes to have a 50-50 balance between engineers and go-to-market staffers.
Qortex was founded as CatapultX in 2020 and rebranded earlier this year.
Because Qortex’s technology analyzes what’s happening in the video frame-by-frame, it understands what’s happening at a very granular level, said Rosenberg.
It was this ability that impressed GFT Ventures Founding Managing Partner Jeff Herbst, who led business development and venture investments for Nvidia for nearly 20 years.
“I’ve been looking at the video search field for many years and I thought that the cleverness and the ingenuity of this company figuring out a way to classify moving video was amazing,” Herbst told Business Insider. Herbst was appointed to the board of directors, along with former CW Network CEO Mark Pedowitz and Silicon Road Ventures Managing Partner Sid Mookerji.
Qortex’s AI technology analyzes video to understand the context as well as the audience viewing it, and uses that knowledge to place ads as an overlay.
In one hypothetical example, if a celebrity is looking at shoes in a shoe store, Qortex could overlay an Adidas ad on top of the video because it recognizes the content. In another hypothetical, it might observe a goalie in an NHL game make a save, and serve up an Allstate ad because its slogan “You’re in good hands” aligns with what just happened in the video.
Qortex can also place an ad based on what it knows about the viewer, so if that person is in-market for a car, Qortex can serve a car ad.
Qortex has two active clients, both of which are demand-side platforms, Rosenberg said. DSPs are software that advertisers use to buy online ads. He predicts that Qortex will have two publishers and one advertiser client by early 2024, and is using the round of fundraising to staff up to accelerate its push for clients that year.
While Qortex is currently making money by helping advertisers buy and place ads on videos, both Rosenberg and Herbst envision Qortex’s AI being used for purposes beyond advertising.
“I saw other applications for the technology, not only in basically serving up ads, but also in providing data to publishers and advertisers alike that will essentially help those people track and monitor their businesses,” Herbst said.
For instance, Rosenberg said Qortex could help publishers identify strobing lights in video to remain ADA compliant, or quickly scan video archives to find specific content.
Qortex will be dipping into GFT’s $140 million debut fund, which launched in September. While GFT has invested in about 10 companies so far Herbst said, Qortex is “one of the first and honestly one of my favorites.”
Check out select slides from the pitch deck that helped Qortex raise its $6 million Series A round.
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