Danish venture capital firm Promentum Equity Partners has sold Grazper Technologies to Yokogawa Electric Corporation, a listed Japanese conglomerate.
Danish venture capital firm Promentum Equity Partners has sold Grazper Technologies to Yokogawa Electric Corporation, a listed Japanese conglomerate.
Grazper develops software for surveillance cameras that can recognise and analyse what the camera sees in real time and pass on the information to the customer. The images are not saved but are passed on in the form of sensor data.
Grazper is owned by its two founders Thomas Jakobsen and David Guldbrandsen, as well as Promentum Equity Partners, a Danish capital fund that invests in Nordic tech companies with global scaling potential.
“We are proud to have been part of the first part of Grazper’s journey,” said partner Irfan Goandal. “Denmark is already a global center for machine learning and artificial intelligence. I have no doubt that this sale will further strengthen Denmark’s position as a place to invest and develop high-tech companies with global potential. It is companies like these that we will continue to develop in Promentum Equity Partners,” he added.
Grazper’s ambition is to revolutionise artificial intelligence by being a leader in real-time, self-learning AI. Thomas Jakobsen, CEO and co-founder of Grazper is very excited about its future potential as part of a large Japanese company.
Access to a broad and diverse customer base in several industries is promising, according to Jakobsen. “This is a unique opportunity for Grazper to scale the company and achieve global representation,” he said.
Jakobsen continued: “Being a part of Yokogawa gives us a whole other platform to commercialise our solutions. Both in terms of technological capabilities and international sales, this acquisition will give Grazper access to the combined production and sales expertise in Yokogawa as well as their over 100 years of experience in developing and commercialising advanced measurement sensors.”
The founders and employees of Grazper Technologies will continue to be based in Copenhagen, and will constitute Yokogawa’s centre for research and development of new cutting-edge products based on embedded AI.
Promentum Equity Partners was founded in 2016 as a collaboration between Promentum Capital and Alternative Equity Partners. The fund is managed by Alternative Equity Partners, a Danish manager of alternative investment funds.
“Grazper is a good example of a company that has a globally scalable potential, which is a characteristic that we in the fund place high importance on,” said Lars Tønnesen, director in Alternative Equity Partners.
