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

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

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.