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David Platt Joins SESAMm’s Advisory Board to Support Strategic Growth

March 31, 2026
5 mins read
David Platt joins SESAMm's Advisory Board to enhance strategic growth and support the expansion of its AI-powered risk intelligence platform.

SESAMm is pleased to announce the appointment of David Platt to its Advisory Board. David has spent his career at the intersection of M&A, corporate strategy, and risk intelligence - most recently as Senior Vice President, Chief Strategy Officer at Moody’s Corporation, where he contributed to the diversification of one of the world's leading financial data companies.

During his twelve years at Moody’s, David helped architect the firm’s diversification into data, analytics, and technology-driven risk assessment. He oversaw more than 75 transactions valued at $9 billion, including landmark acquisitions in climate risk, cybersecurity, and private company data. Before Moody’s, he held senior M&A roles at Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Credit Suisse First Boston, advising on complex transactions and corporate strategy for global clients.

“Over the course of my career, I’ve focused on helping organizations scale by expanding into new markets, strengthening their strategic foundations, and building platforms that help institutions better measure, manage, and understand risk,” said David Platt. "SESAMm has built an impressive platform at the intersection of AI and risk intelligence, and I’m excited to support the team as they shape their strategy and scale the business globally.”

David’s appointment comes as SESAMm continues to scale its AI-powered risk intelligence platform and expand its global presence. His experience driving profitable and strategic growth initiatives and scaling data and analytics platforms will help guide the company’s strategic direction.

"David has sat on both sides of the table, as a buyer of data and analytics capabilities, and as a trusted advisor to some of the world's largest financial institutions," said Sylvain Forté, CEO and Co-Founder of SESAMm. "That perspective will be invaluable as we shape SESAMm’s strategic direction and execute our next phase of growth."

David is a CFA charterholder and has served on the boards of BitSight Technologies and ICRA, an Indian credit rating agency. He holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

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Awards

SESAMm Wins Best Information and Data Provider

September 15, 2022
5 mins read

We have exciting news to share! The HFM US Services Awards 2022 judging panel—a diverse panel of leading hedge fund COOs, CFOs, CCOs, GCs, and CTOs—selected SESAMm as the best information and data provider!

Here's a little about why and how we earned this prestigious award.

Choosing the best information and data provider

From our event host, With Intelligence:

“With Intelligence HFM US Services Awards recognize and reward hedge fund service providers who have demonstrated exceptional client service, innovative product development, and strong and sustainable business growth over the past 12 months.

The rigorous judging process, based on the views of a panel of leading hedge fund COOs, CFOs, CCOs, GCs, and CTOs, ensures that the Awards recognize those driving up service standards across the sector and stand out from the crowd as the ones the big providers really want to win.”

A big thanks to SESAMm's investors, partners, and clients

We thank our clients, investors, and partners for your support and patronage. Thank you for being such a big part of SESAMm; you're why we do what we do, and many of you have been involved since day one. And your generous and encouraging attitude has helped get us here today.

One of seven shortlisted in this category

After winning best use of artificial intelligence or blockchain at the 2022 HFM US Technology Awards earlier this year, we were encouraged to apply for best information and data provider. As a result, the judging panel selected SESSAMm as one of seven providers shortlisted for this award.

To be eligible for this award, we had to apply and provide details about our client service initiatives, the innovative product development we conducted, the growth we experienced over the past 12 months, and more. For the best information and data provider category, the criteria the judges look at are:

  • Commercial success and business growth
  • Demonstration of product or service innovation
  • Description of future product or service development possibilities
  • Positive customer feedback via submitted testimonials

Honored and excited

Of course, we're honored to earn best information and data provider at 2022 HFM US Services Awards. We're also excited for our clients and partners because our products and services are game-changers for hedge fund services. And while we have more work to do and clients to serve, we think the future looks bright for us, our partners, and our clients.

About SESAMm and TextReveal

SESAMm is a leading NLP technology company serving global investment firms, corporations, and investors, such as private equity firms, hedge funds, and other asset management firms. Through TextReveal®, we give you NLP capabilities to generate your own alternative data for use cases, such as ESG and SDG, sentiment, private equity due diligence, corporation studies, and more. And with access to SESAMm’s massive data lake, made up of 20 billion articles and messages and growing, you can make better investment decisions.

Reach out to SESAMm

For a personal demonstration of our award-winning platform, reach out to a representative

ESG | NLP | Alternative Data

TextReveal ESG Alerts, a better way to research and monitor your investment portfolio

September 13, 2022
5 mins read

SESAMm is proud to announce the launch of our latest solution: TextReveal® ESG Alerts. TextReveal ESG Alerts identifies ESG risks1 and positive impact coverage2 in over 100 languages by tracking mentions of your entire portfolio across 20 billion historical articles with millions of new ones added daily in near real-time.

1 Inspired by SASB and other major standards.
2 Based on UN SDGs.

Why use TextReveal ESG Alerts for your portfolio

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings have become a conventional measure of a company’s risk against those business areas. They are also increasingly critical as legislation and stakeholders focus on sustainability, positive impact initiatives, and corporate social responsibility (CSR). So with the practice of ESG rating, investors have been able to use those scores to make decisions about their portfolios. Of course, investors are committed to a greener future, too.

Unfortunately, traditional ESG ratings come with challenges. For example, according to Andrew McLaughlin, a contributor to The Globe and Mail, many ESG rating providers are “popping up like dandelions,” and “each uses its own methodologies to rank and score publicly traded companies based on their purported environmental, social and governance risk and performance.” Further, you might have access to ratings, but they’re only updated once per quarter or once yearly.

With SESAMm’s TextReveal ESG Alerts, you can access consistent, timely daily data on five million public and private companies to better assess risks and receive early warnings.

Sample ESG controversy monitoring chart
Figure 1: In 2020, U.S. news sentiment falls ahead of the stock market in response to COVID-19 concerns.

The model can calculate sentiment for each company by analyzing the news of individual companies. It’s also possible to create a composite to measure the sentiment related to a stock index. The sentiment data also helps management and investor relations because it provides a quantitative means of understanding the extent to which investors are concerned about certain news about their company.

Verifying the results

Verification using Japanese has revealed that the timing of bottoming and ceiling of text sentiment precedes those of stock prices. The collaborating team compared the performance of:

  • A model that uses only orthodox financial and economic data as inputs
  • A model that considers NLP and financial and economic data, confirming that the latter could generate higher alpha
SESAMm equity model performance and characteristics chart and tables
ESG controversy monitoring can alert you to potential risks before market-moving events occur. Illustrated: Tesla ESG scores for pollutants, ethical standards, discrimination, and environmental impact.

The TextReveal ESG Alerts edge

broad-coverage

Broad coverage

Access five million private and public companies of all sizes, including micro-caps, to identify risks in over 100 languages.

expertise

Expertise

Leverage ninety pre-built yet taxonomy-adaptable ESG risk categories such as SASB standards, UN Global Compact, and UN SDG-based positive impact statistics coverage.

transparency

Transparency

Gain insights with deeper analysis, seeing specific articles driving your alerts.

timeliness

Timeliness

View live web data for forward-looking scores and insights.

TextReveal ESG Alerts features

Because we trained them on a representative corpus selected from billions of articles from prestigious news organizations, local news, and discussion forums, our NLP tools can understand finance and interpret slang, misspellings, and textspeak.

Read more:

 Sample ESG and UN SDG dashboard
Get an ESG and UN SDG dashboard view of your portfolio.

The best part is that you can receive alerts and monitor scores in the way that works best for you. ESG and UN SDG‐based positive impact statistics can be accessed and delivered via:

email-alerts

Email Alerts

crm-cloud-based-integration

CRM and cloud based integration

live-dashboards

Live dashboards

api-data-files

API and data files

esg-studies

ESG studies

Get the SESAMm edge from TextReveal ESG Alerts

Save time vetting your current investments and evaluating new ones while providing higher quality, objective results compared with manual monitoring, black-box ratings, or self-reported questionnaires.

Reach out to a SESAMm representative for a personal demo today.

Events | Awards | Fintech

SESAMm Wins Best Of Show Award at Finovate Europe

March 28, 2022
5 mins read

SESAMm Wins Best Of Show Award at Finovate Europe

SESAMm, a leading provider of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence technology for investment managers, has been recognized with the Best of Show Award at Finovate Europe 2022, which took place on March 22nd and 23rd in London. The award was granted to SESAMm following a demonstration conferred by CEO and Co-founder Sylvain Forté, during which he showcased the company's marquee product TextReveal®.

"Finovate Europe represents a unique opportunity for best-in-class Fintech companies to showcase their innovations in front of leading institutions. It was great to demonstrate our product in front of an elite audience and win the Best of Show award." Said Sylvain Forté, CEO of SESAMm, "We are proud to say that this event was a big success for SESAMm, judging by the level of interest in our technology and its applications to the current ESG topic."

SESAMm is a fintech company that specializes in Big Data and Artificial Intelligence. Through its product, TextReveal®, the company provides analytics and investment signals to finance and corporate professionals by analyzing over 17 billion web articles and messages using natural language processing and machine learning. TextReveal® is a ready-to-use alternative data platform; its NLP (Natural Language Processing) powered engine provides daily sentiment and ESG data mapped to public and private companies to fuel investment strategies.

Finovate Europe, one of the most awaited annual events, sheds light on innovative fintech startups and helps them gain more recognition. It brings together over 1,000 senior finance and tech experts, including “demoers” and insightful speakers.

"We love to see companies like SESAMm join us at Finovate demonstrating their cutting-edge technologies. It really underscores our commitment to provide a platform to promote innovative startups in the financial ecosystem." Said Greg Palmer, VP of Finovate. "Congrats to the SESAMm team for winning Best of Show, it’s clear they really resonated with our audience!"

SESAMm's successful appearance at Finovate Europe once more confirms the great reception the company is getting in the industry, as just a few weeks ago, it was announced that SESAMm was the recipient of the HFM award for Best use of Artificial Intelligence.

TextReveal® Streams emphasizes SESAMm's goal to provide future investors with the accurate and necessary data to make decisions accordingly. Find out more here.

About SESAMm:

SESAMm is a leading company in alternative data and artificial intelligence, delivering global investment firms and corporates data-driven insight and investment analytics. It owns a proprietary 13 years historical data lake containing over 17 billion articles publicly sourced from more than 4 million sources (blogs, forums, social networks, etc.). This represents 10 to 100 times more information than that of our competitors.

Events | Fintech

SESAMm Selected to Demo at Finovate Europe

March 15, 2022
5 mins read

We are thrilled to announce that SESAMm was selected to demo at the exclusive Finovate Europe event on March 22nd – 23rd in London, UK. This comes on the heels of SESAMm receiving the 2022 HFM US Technology Award for “Best Use of Artificial Intelligence or Blockchain Technology.”

Finovate Europe invites a selection of European Fintech leaders to discuss and showcase the latest technology innovations and trends in the industry. CEO Sylvian Forté will demonstrate SESAMm’s latest innovation TextReveal® Streams, at the event, live on the main stage. Streams is a ready-to-use alternative dataset. It provides daily sentiment analysis and ESG data mapped to public and private firms leveraging SESAMm’s NLP (Natural Language Processing) powered engine to fuel investment strategies.

SESAMm owns a proprietary 13 years historical data lake containing over 17 billion articles publicly sourced from more than 4 million sources (blogs, forums, social networks, etc.). This represents 10 to 100 times more information than that of our competitors. SESAMm works with Hedge Funds, Private Equity, and other financial firms to help them generate alpha, gather exclusive insights, and tailor unique analytics.

Join us with over 1000 senior attendees, 50+ demoers including SESAMm and its CEO Sylvain Forté, and 70+ insightful speakers. In addition to demonstrating our latest innovation on stage, our team will also be available to perform 1:1 demos in the exhibit hall area. If you’re attending the event, stop by to say hi!!

SESAMm, a leading provider of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence technology for investment managers, has been recognized with the Best of Show Award at Finovate Europe 2022, which took place on March 22nd and 23rd in London. The award was granted to SESAMm following a demonstration conferred by CEO and Co-founder Sylvain Forté, during which he showcased the company's marquee product TextReveal®.

"Finovate Europe represents a unique opportunity for best-in-class Fintech companies to showcase their innovations in front of leading institutions. It was great to demonstrate our product in front of an elite audience and win the Best of Show award." Said Sylvain Forté, CEO of SESAMm, "We are proud to say that this event was a big success for SESAMm, judging by the level of interest in our technology and its applications to the current ESG topic."

SESAMm is a fintech company that specializes in Big Data and Artificial Intelligence. Through its product, TextReveal®, the company provides analytics and investment signals to finance and corporate professionals by analyzing over 17 billion web articles and messages using natural language processing and machine learning. TextReveal® is a ready-to-use alternative data platform; its NLP (Natural Language Processing) powered engine provides daily sentiment and ESG data mapped to public and private companies to fuel investment strategies.

Finovate Europe, one of the most awaited annual events, sheds light on innovative fintech startups and helps them gain more recognition. It brings together over 1,000 senior finance and tech experts, including “demoers” and insightful speakers.

"We love to see companies like SESAMm join us at Finovate demonstrating their cutting-edge technologies. It really underscores our commitment to provide a platform to promote innovative startups in the financial ecosystem." Said Greg Palmer, VP of Finovate. "Congrats to the SESAMm team for winning Best of Show, it’s clear they really resonated with our audience!"

SESAMm's successful appearance at Finovate Europe once more confirms the great reception the company is getting in the industry, as just a few weeks ago, it was announced that SESAMm was the recipient of the HFM award for Best use of Artificial Intelligence.

TextReveal® Streams emphasizes SESAMm's goal to provide future investors with the accurate and necessary data to make decisions accordingly. Find out more here.

About SESAMm:

SESAMm is a leading company in alternative data and artificial intelligence, delivering global investment firms and corporates data-driven insight and investment analytics. It owns a proprietary 13 years historical data lake containing over 17 billion articles publicly sourced from more than 4 million sources (blogs, forums, social networks, etc.). This represents 10 to 100 times more information than that of our competitors.

Context

In December 2021, Carlyle led a $475 million Series E funding round for YipitData. As part of its diligence process, Carlyle used SESAMm’s Natural Language Processing (NLP) models to help inform this investment decision.

Results

YipitData is an alternative data firm that extracts billions of data points from the web and other alternative data sources to generate proprietary data and KPIs on industries and individual companies.

SESAMm’s TextReveal® platform enabled Carlyle to extract valuable insights on the alternative data market to assess the global market opportunity based on the analysis of more than 17 billion web articles and messages. Using NLP in its due diligence process, Carlyle’s deal team was able to confirm YipitData’s leading market position and growth prospects across multiple industries and geographies. Furthermore, a risk analysis drawn from social discussions, anonymous forums and dark web content concluded there was very low risk associated with the company.

SESAMm provided valuable insights based on the analysis of billions of documents for this specific deal and helped translate unstructured contents into industry-level trends, competitive insights and risk analytics. These types of analytics can add value to the entire investment lifecycle, from sourcing to due diligence and portfolio monitoring — providing investment teams with key insights to assess investment opportunities and build a competitive edge.

“SESAMm provided us with valuable and timely insights for our investment process through its NLP alternative data. They helped us gain even more confidence in YipitData’s strong potential by confirming the company’s leading position. We are very happy with the insights provided by SESAMm and look forward to further collaborations.” Senior Associate – Technology Private Equity, The Carlyle Group

ESG | Partnerships

EthiFinance and SESAMm join forces to detect ESG controversies on SMEs

December 16, 2021
5 mins read

PARIS, December 16, 2021

SESAMm, an alternative data specialist at the forefront of AI-based text analytics, and EthiFinance, a non-financial analysis and consulting agency with expertise in sustainable development, are now working together to launch a new unique service: Identifying and scoring ESG controversies on European Small & Midsize Enterprises (SMEs).

When dealing with SMEs, a common issue with traditional data providers and rating agencies is the lack of coverage. Information gaps and opacity about a company can negatively affect asset managers in their investment decisions.

EthiFinance possesses strong expertise in rating SMEs – both listed and private – for the purpose of portfolio due diligence and monitoring. SESAMm’s TextReveal® tool leverages Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyze more than 16 billion online articles and messages to track ESG topics.

“We have been working with SESAMm for months and have now reached a stage where we can deliver quality and depth of results needed to create reliable and relevant ESG alerts.”, shares Xavier Leroy, Head of Investor Services from EthiFinance  “Our teams of ESG analysts have enhanced and refined these alerts for controversies into our methodology, thus ensuring value to our clients”.

Controversy detections are notoriously difficult to assess and evaluate properly, be it the language barrier, lack of data, or difficulty for machines to work with ambiguity. The democratization of artificial intelligence and data science, the exponential growth of data, and wider access to more computing power have provided a fertile ground for new solutions to address this issue.

“Natural Language Processing is a game-changer, especially when working on ESG. Combined with alternative data, it helps us crunch billions of articles in dozens of languages and detect controversies very quickly” explains Sylvain Forté, CEO of SESAMm. “By fine-tuning TextReveal® with EthiFinance’s expertise in ESG, we are able to reach excellent results with 100% accuracy on the detection of critical controversies.”

SESAMm’s data and tools are leveraged globally by asset managers like The Carlyle Group, to conduct ESG studies for the purpose of due diligence, company analysis, and risk management. The partnership with EthiFinance breaks new ground thanks to its unique expertise in sustainability, ESG know-how, and very specific focus on European midsized companies.

SESAMm and EthiFinance have also developed a specific virality indicator to help assess how ESG controversies are spreading on the web. “This technological edge relies on an enormous amount of data which we can access through SESAMm’s platform,” shares Leroy.

A worldwide scandal, significantly impacting a company’s market price and its ESG scoring, can start from just one article or post, sometimes in a very niche community. SESAMm’s data lake, with its billions of articles and documents, serves as a real-time curated proxy of the internet enabling the timely detection of such scandals and the subsequent insights.

“This level of speed and depth of information not only represents a headstart when it comes to the competition but also a safety-net for asset managers, looking to monitor and manage their portfolio” confides Forté. “This innovative approach can be applied to other regions, Europe is only a starting point.”

The two companies are now working together to expand this innovative approach to listed companies across Europe.

About EthiFinance

Founded in 2004, EthiFinance is a non-financial analysis and consulting agency that supports its clients in managing risks and opportunities related to sustainable development.

EthiFinance develops services tailor-made to meet the specific needs of its clients, including investors, banks, companies and not-for-profit organizations.

Since 2017, EthiFinance has been working closely with Spread Research, a French financial rating agency (registered with ESMA) and independent credit research provider. The two companies are now part of the Qivalio Group.

Qivalio is an innovative European group providing rating, research, and consulting services in the field of sustainable finance. The Group provides solutions for investors, companies and organizations to address the challenges raised by financing as well as social and environmental transformations.

For more information: www.ethifinance.com/en/

About SESAMm

SESAMm (www.sesamm.com) is an innovative company specializing in alternative data and artificial intelligence for investment. Its team builds analytics and indicators, such as Sentiment Analytics, ESG Indicators, and investment signals by analyzing billions of web articles and messages using natural language processing and machine learning. With its NLP platform TextReveal®, SESAMm addresses the entire value chain of alpha research. With 6 offices including Paris, New York, London, and Tokyo, SESAMm works with major hedge funds, banks, private equity firms, corporate and asset management clients around the world for fundamental or quantitative investment use cases, market analysis and competitive insights.

For more information: www.sesamm.com

EthiFinance
23 Rue de Liège, 75008 Paris
margot.cazeaux@ethifinance.com

SESAMm
Malik Senouci
Head of Marketing and Communications
press@sesamm.com

PARIS, January 28, 2021 — SESAMm, one of the leading providers of analytics and artificial intelligence solutions for investment professionals and enterprises, has concluded a Series B funding round for over €7.5M led by the Fintech VC fund of NewAlpha Asset Management and global investment firm The Carlyle Group (NASDAQ: CG).

The investment is intended to accelerate SESAMm’s global growth, allowing it to acquire talent and expand operations in Europe, Asia and North America. Plans for the funding also include developing AI-enabled research tools and dashboards for corporate customers, as well as continuing R&D investment in its Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing tools.

SESAMm will also extend its reach and address new market segments and use cases, including private equity sourcing and portfolio monitoring as well as Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing and risk screening.

SESAMm’s sustained performance and this new funding confirm its leadership and technological edge in AI and alternative data for the investment management sector. SESAMm’s CEO and Co-Founder Sylvain Forté’s shares his confidence in the company’s future:

We understand our customers’ needs and challenges in using Big Data and AI effectively in the investment process. We launched our products TextReveal and SignalReveal to provide clients with relevant and actionable data and models, and plan to continue to improve these products in terms of speed, features, and addressable use cases as we did with our ESG monitoring analytics”.

“We’ve been very impressed with the market traction SESAMm has gained in the last few years” said Lior Derhy, Managing Partner at NewAlpha Asset Management. “SESAMm’s cutting-edge technologies and analytical tools have proven their effectiveness in meeting financial institutions’ market needs.”

As one of SESAMm’s major clients, Carlyle quickly moved from pilot to scale and has had access to the company’s innovative alternative data solutions since the start of 2020.  

“Expanding our partnership with SESAMm builds on Carlyle’s continued leadership in leveraging big data, data science, advanced analytics, and machine learning to further differentiate our investment platform,” said Matt Anderson, Chief Digital Officer and Managing Director at The Carlyle Group. “We look forward to continuing to work with SESAMm to provide additive insights for our deal sourcing, diligence, and to help guide our portfolio companies in value creation.”

Havenrock, AngelSquare, La Caisse d’Epargne, BPI, and Banque Populaire, all early investors in SESAMm, are again participating in this funding round.

“We are particularly pleased to see SESAMm grow steadily and acquire new clients in the US, Europe, and Asia. They have been able not only to adapt but to grow in these difficult times. Their next steps are now focused on scaling, recruiting, and most of all expanding internationally,” said Omar N. Barakat, President of Havenrock.

Located in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Tunis and Metz (France), SESAMm works for a large array of blue-chip clients including large asset managers, banks, and hedge funds to identify opportunities in both fundamental and quantitative investment strategies. The company recently welcomed Dale Richards (previously President of Enterprise Data Management at Sungard and board member of Quandl) and Jonathan Neitzell (former Chief Data Officer at Goldman Sachs AM) as new board advisors, joining Mark Garbin (Independent Director, US Funds) in supporting SESAMm’s strategic decision-making and market expansion in North America.

About NewAlpha Asset Management

Globally recognized as a leading investor in Emerging Manager investing, NewAlpha sources, analyses, selects and supports innovative investment funds and high potential Fintechs. NewAlpha offers its institutional clients a wide range of tailor-made products and services in the areas of Private Equity and Absolute Return strategies. In 2015 NewAlpha launched a Private Equity investment activity specializing in technology-driven sectors including Venture Capital (primarily FinTech, Insurtech and AMtech) and Growth Equity (TMT, health and industrial niches).

Regulated by the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF), NewAlpha Asset Management is a subsidiary of La Française AM (Crédit Mutuel Nord Europe group)

For more information: www.newalpha.com

About The Carlyle Group

The Carlyle Group (NASDAQ: CG) is a global investment firm with deep industry expertise that deploys private capital across three business segments: Global Private Equity, Global Credit and Investment Solutions. With $230 billion of assets under management as of September 30, 2020, Carlyle’s purpose is to invest wisely and create value on behalf of its investors, portfolio companies and the communities in which we live and invest. Carlyle employs more than 1,800 people in 30 offices across six continents. Further information is available at www.carlyle.com.
Follow Carlyle on Twitter @OneCarlyle.

About SESAMm

Founded in 2014, SESAMm is an innovative company specializing in big data and artificial intelligence for investment. Its team builds analytics and investment signals by analyzing billions of web articles and messages using natural language processing and machine learning. With its NLP platform TextReveal and its quantitative data science platform SignalReveal, SESAMm addresses the entire value chain of alpha research. SESAMm’s 50+ person team in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Tunis and Metz (France) works with major hedge funds, banks and asset management clients around the world for both fundamental and quantitative use cases.

For more information: www.sesamm.com

SESAMm

Malik Senouci
Head of Marketing and Communications
press@sesamm.com

New Alpha Asset Management

Lior Derhy
Téléphone: (+33)1 73 00 73 19
lderhy@newalpha.net

The Carlyle Group U.S.

Brittany Berliner
Phone: +1 212 813-4839
brittany.berliner@carlyle.com  

EMEA

Andrew Kenny
Phone: +44 7816 176120
andrew.kenny@carlyle.com

Fundraising

SESAMm Raises 4.4M€ and Opens Offices in New York

April 4, 2019
5 mins read

The SESAMm founding team, surrounded by its investors and associates during this fundraising event.

SESAMm, a French leader in Big Data and Artificial Intelligence solutions applied to asset management, just closed a €4.4 million funding round. With a total of €8 million euros raised since its launch, SESAMm’s objective is to pursue its expansion into the U.S market – with its new offices – and in Japan.

Innovative Technologies Dedicated to Financial Experts

SESAMm helps its clients integrate web data and data science technologies into their investment strategies.

In less than a year, SESAMm provided its services to Nikko Global Wrap, Candriam, La Française Investment Solutions and multiple international investment firms. The company also signed new contracts with leading players such as Groupama Asset Management, Raiffeisen Bank International, and Nomura, Japan’s leading investment bank.

SESAMm’s team carries out rigorous work using its Natural Language Processing technologies and is attentive to Groupama Asset Management’s specific needs” says Gaëlle MALLÉJAC, Investment Director, Active Management, of Groupama Asset Management. “The results are promising and allow us to anticipate a wide range of applications for these new technologies”.

Hypergrowth for an International Fintech Company

The company has been strongly supported by a dedicated network of thematic partners. “Since its launch, SESAMm has already earned a very good track record and is well engaged to become one of our champions” says Alain CLOT, President & Founder of France Fintech.

Finance Innovation is proud to follow and support SESAMm in its growth since we awarded it with our label in 2016” explains Vincent LAPADU-HARGUES, Head of Asset Management Activities and Support to R&D Projects of Finance Innovation.

In order to better respond to asset manager’s needs, the company is now developing a Framework which is already used by some of its clients. This modular and ready-to-use machine learning pipeline was specifically conceived to automate, simplify and accelerate investment signals creation from what is called “alternative data”, specifically using Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning.

With the opening of its offices in New York, SESAMm can now not only increases its brand recognition in the USA but also have a better access to new markets. “Our offices allow us to reinforce our position in the United-States and increase our proximity with our American clients” says Sylvain FORTE, co-founder & CEO of SESAMm.

New Fundraising to Reach New Horizons

This fundraising is perfectly aligned with the acceleration of SESAMm’s development. “We believe SESAMm has all of the ingredients for a successful future: a clear strategy, strong team, rich technology and an innovative business idea that sets it apart from the others“ mentions Havenrock, lead investor in this round of financing.

SESAMm is also accompanied in this round by Caisse d’Epargne Grand-Est Europe who also takes part in this operation. The other investors are AngelSquare Fintech, A-Venture and Business Angels, including some from the United-States. SESAMm is also supported by ILP Group (Institut Lorrain de Participation) and BPI (Banque Publique d’Investissement).

With this new funding round, SESAMm now has the capacity to go even further: we will be able to grow our teams, further enhance our technologies and accelerate our business development. The opening of offices in Japan and London, two high-potential markets, are our next objectives”, concludes Sylvain FORTE.

About SESAMm:

SESAMm is a company specialized in the creation of innovative analytics for asset management. It analyzes millions of messages, articles and posts in real time from more than 250,000 data sources. Its team consists of more than 30 people (Paris, Metz, Luxembourg, New York) and major clients from all over the world trust it (asset managers and major hedge funds in the US, UK, Japan, France…). Its key technologies are Natural language Processing, Big Data, Machine Learning and Quantitative Analysis.

About Havenrock:

Havenrock is an investment company based in Paris and Los Angeles. Relying on its strong global presence, Havenrock is actively involved in the international expansion of its portfolio companies while offering strong operational and strategic support.

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