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.

​FinTech and Big Data for financial markets – SESAMm raises €2.6 million Euros. Objective: to accelerate its international development!

SESAMm – a specialist in the exploitation of applied Big Data to asset management – has just finalized a capital raise representing a new acceleration phase of its growth. The company is aiming to become a leader in the fields of alternative data and artificial intelligence for the financial markets.  

Innovative and powerful solutions to forecast the markets

SESAMm, with its offices in Metz, Paris and Luxembourg, developed two highly innovative asset management solutions to forecast the markets. The first solution, since 2014, is the Data Stream Premium, a predictive trading signal generation service based on Big Data and artificial intelligence. It enables the alternative Investment Funds and the Hedge Funds to generate outperformance in the financial markets, and this first solution attracted major players in the sector.

In 2017, L’Humeur des Marchés was launched, a data visualization platform as well as an API access (Programming Interface), which offers alternative analysis and data on many thousands of assets, available in 8 languages including Chinese and Japanese. This perfectioning of the algorithms and tools, which improves the arbitration decisions, the research and exploitation of market opportunities, increases the international notoriety of SESAMm.

“The American multinationals are interested in us, this is very promising.” reveals Sylvain Forte, co-founder and CEO of SESAMm. “In one year, we have almost doubled our staff and we plan to hire more than a dozen of new employees until the end of 2018 in fields such as data science, software development, automatic language processing, and quantitative analysis. We have the objective of doubling our turnover for the year 2018 and we are aiming €20 millions of turnover by 2021.“

An expanding Startup

Today, the startup SESAMm has offices in 3 cities in France and Luxembourg; SESAMm has 18 employees and relies on top profiles in the fields of artificial intelligence and quantitative analysis. Its commercial activity is booming, with the recent signing of two big agreements with Nikko Global Wrap (one of the subsidiaries of Sumitomo Mitsui Asset Management, a major asset manager in Japan) managing JPY 1.7 trillion and La Française Investment Solutions, a subsidiary of the Group La Française (in the top 10 of asset management in France, managing $64 billion).

“Our objective is to enhance our positioning in France and then in Europe, particularly in the beginning of this year with a new subsidiary in London. Our development will also go through the United States. The growth prospects of our market are strong: from $67 billion in 2014, the market for software for asset management should grow to nearly $104 billion in 2019 according to MarketsAndMarkets”, stated Sylvain Forte.

Capital raising: confidence and growth

The bank “Caisse d’Epargne Lorraine Champagne-Ardenne” and the fund “Fonds Venture Numérique Lorrain” are the main investors in this capital raising in which BPI, the bank “Banque Populaire de Lorraine”, the network of “Bourgogne Angels” and other national and international business angels have confirmed and renewed their support and participation. And thanks to their supports, SESAMm can accelerate its national and international growth.

“We are proud for being the first investors to believe in the potential of SESAMm and we are looking forward to this new capital raising,” explains Marie Tribout, chairman of the fund “Fonds Venture Numérique Lorrain”. “We participate in this capital raise for two main reasons: first, our conviction about the relevance of the SESAMM project and its team excellence; secondly, this participation is part of our Neobusiness system extension, which is based on supporting closely the growth of startups in our region.” said Benoît Mercier, chairman the bank “Caisse d’Epargne Lorraine Champagne- Ardenne”.

“Our partners trust is precious” explains Pierre Rinaldi, co-founder and COO of SESAMm.” It validates the excellent performance of our technologies, which are improved continuously by our R & D center. We have new applications in the works.”

For this fundraise, SESAMm has been helped by Eric Bezard, specialist in administrative and financial management and equity capital markets, from the financial consulting firm TMA. SESAMm was also helped by the Parisian business lawyers firm Orrick with a team led by George Rigo, associate, with his collaborators Olivier Vuillod and Cécile Renaud.

Unique and innovative technologies

“SESAMm is a valuable partner for Eagle Alpha”, said Hugh O’Connor, the director of Data Sourcing and Partnerships at Eagle Alpha. “The SESAMm products provide a level of scientific rigor, transparency and flexibility that distinguishes the company from other market players.”

“The French Investment Solutions is collaborating with the SESAMm team in order to explore potential investment approaches based on artificial intelligence. The LFIS (La Française Investment Solutions) uses SESAMm technologies in order to exploit the Big Data in the field of quantitative management “, said Guillaume Garchery, the portfolio manager and head of the quantitative research R&D at La Française Investment Solutions.

On 5 December in New York, SESAMm was selected to take part in The BIG Alternative Data Showcase Event, one of the major events focused on alternative data applied to the asset management industry. Organised by our partner Eagle Alpha, this very first step in the US market for SESAMm represented a unique opportunity: to bring our expertise and solutions to the biggest asset managers globally.

Since September, SESAMm’s business has been growing steadily. In addition to the ongoing discussions we have with several significant asset managers, two major groups have signed a contract with us: one of the top 5 asset managers in Japan that has more than $100 billion of assets under management; and one of the top 10 asset managers in France with more than $50 billion under management.

In addition to this great news, we recently signed partnerships with two major data providers in the USA, one of them with Eagle Alpha. Shortly after our agreement, from a list of 450 data vendors, Eagle Alpha selected 12 of them to be part of the BIG Alternative Data Showcase Event, SESAMm being the only French company chosen. This event in New York City represents the biggest one globally on alternative data applied to asset management. That was an opportunity for our company to present for the very first time L’Humeur des Marchés and our expertise in the United States.

Sponsored by Deloitte, Lowenstein Sandler, S&P Global Market Intelligence and CRUX, Eagle Alpha’s event showed us how unique and exceptional the US market is in terms of business opportunities for SESAMm. Gathering renown international hedge funds, investment banks but also major companies from other sectors with needs in Artificial Intelligence and Data Analysis, this event proved to be one of the most interesting and exciting we have attended so far.

Following this event, with the multiple contacts and leads for both partnerships and business contracts that have been gathered, our journey home only strengthens our intention to plan future business trips in the United States and our entry on this market.