Ceros Announces $100 Million Strategic Investment Led by Sumeru Equity Partners

Partnership with SaaS leader continues its focus on using experiential content to help brands unlock their creative potential

Ceros, an interactive SaaS design platform, announced a strategic investment from Sumeru Equity Partners (SEP), a growth-focused technology investment firm based in the San Francisco area, to continue its momentum as a leader in digital content creation. Management and existing investors participated in the $100 million investment. Additional terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Ceros is a cloud-based design platform that enables brands and publishers to create immersive, scalable, interactive content without writing a single line of code. The Ceros platform empowers some of the world’s largest brands—NBC, United Airlines, Snap, McKinsey, IBM, Condé Nast, JP Morgan, Red Bull, Pinterest, and others—in transforming their digital experiences. Ceros’ more than 500 global customers have shown an increased need for engaging digital content. In the last few months, such customers have doubled their run rate of creation of live experiences on the Ceros platform as companies have prioritized their digital presence to the highest level.

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“I’m clearly biased,” says Ceros CEO and founder Simon Berg, “but Ceros has always been a world class product with a world class team. And now we have a world class partner. I’m beyond excited about the next chapter and the impact we will have on the industry with our new friends and partners at SEP.”

Berg says, “SEP has been tracking Ceros’ growth for more than two years, including through the pandemic, giving us all a chance to get to know each other and build trust during challenging times. Just as importantly, they recognized the growing relevance of the digital creative space and our growing dominance in it.”

Berg sees the partnership as the perfect blend of art and science. “SEP’s strengths lie in data, analytics, and operational support in scaling SaaS businesses and our strengths lie in design, creativity, and a great product. When we join the two, we have a marriage of limitless potential.”

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SEP’s investment was led by Sanjeet Mitra, John Brennan, George Kadifa, and Vinay Kumar.

“We are super excited about our partnership with Ceros, as we’re seeing significant acceleration in the creative software and content creation spaces—already a multi-billion dollar market—as enterprise communication activity and budgets further shift in that direction,” said Brennan, Kadifa, and Mitra. “Ceros has built a leadership position in that space by prioritizing platform innovation and immersive design simplicity. Ceros’ core proposition that ‘experience matters’ has been emblematic of how the business has scaled—focusing first on customer needs through a relentless commitment to product, building a terrific team, and creating an inspiring, energetic culture.”

The transaction closed in July 2020. As a part of the transaction, existing Ceros investors will continue as significant shareholders, and board members Lawson DeVries—Managing General Partner of Grotech Ventures—and Laura Sachar—Managing Partner of StarVest Partners—will continue as Board Directors. Canaccord Genuity served as financial advisor and Kirkland & Ellis served as legal advisor to Sumeru Equity Partners. Cooley served as legal advisor to Ceros and existing shareholders.

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