VocalIQ
Country: United Kingdom
Region: East of England
Investors: Amadeus Capital Partners, Cambridge Enterprise
When Amadeus Capital Partners and Cambridge Enterprise invested in VocalIQ in 2014, the AI-driven dialogue management company had spun out from the University of Cambridge but needed investment to grow and realise its potential.
Amadeus worked with the founders, building the company from just two staff to around 20 over the course of 15 months, providing operational and strategic support across all elements of the business, and worked closely with the management team to achieve a successful exit in September 2015.
Hermann Hauser
Co-founder - Amadeus Capital Partners
We were able to work with the founders to attract world-class machine learning engineers to Cambridge and retain them in the UK after acquisition
10x
increase in employee numbers
£750k
invested in growth
What did the business need?
Equity funding to grow the business as no revenue to support debt funding
Requirement to grow the team beyond the initial founders and recruit machine learning experts
Expertise to guide the management team in exit negotiations
How did private equity backing create lasting value?
Venture capital brand name helped with recruitment
Encouraged the team to recruit ahead of plan to hire the machine learning talent available
Provided operational and strategic support to management team
Worked with management team to gain favourable terms from acquirer on sale of the business
What outcomes did private equity investment achieve?
Team grew from two at the time of Amadeus’s initial investment to around 20 at exit, approximately 15 months later
Team remained in Cambridge after acquisition and acquirer has grown its presence in Cambridge since investing
Two companies have been started by ex-employees of VocalIQ since the exit and received VC backing
The exit has added to the brand of Cambridge, helping to attract more people to the area and making Cambridge more prominent on the global tech scene
Investors
