Company adds several luxury brands to its client roster while experiencing remarkable client retention

MarqVision, makers of the world’s first AI-powered platform designed to protect human creativity and innovation in a digital world, today announced that it has raised $20 million in Series A funding. DST Global Partners and Atinum Investments joined previous investors Softbank Ventures, Bass Investment, and Y-Combinator in recognition of the enormous issues created by the counterfeiting and theft of digital assets. With the funds, Marqvision continues to advance product development beyond its brand protection platform to create a new IP operating system that also allows companies to create, manage, protect and monetize IP rights – all in one place.

Counterfeiting has become a massive problem, affecting all corners of the globe, and it is expected to grow another 50% this year to reach nearly $3 trillion in 2023. The magnitude of the problem, coupled with MarqVision’s innovative technology, is what attracted DST Global Partners and Softbank, both among the largest and most influential investors in the world. The participation of global investors in this round shows confidence in MarqVision’s ability to build a single platform for IP and attests to the huge market opportunity in this space.

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Brands spend millions of dollars developing innovative and coveted products, then millions more on digital campaigns and online shopping experiences to promote them, only for counterfeiters to misappropriate such assets and create inferior copies for their financial gain. The rise of online marketplaces and third-party sellers has made this possible by lowering the hurdle for distributing counterfeits globally and increasing the volume and velocity at which counterfeit products are sold. Brands traditionally rely on law firms to deal with infringers, but it is practically impossible to take effective action against millions of counterfeits that are traded in real-time – both small and large companies often have no such recourse.

MarqVision delivers the only solution to help digital content owners and global brands protect their IP. Its technology has been adopted by many of the world’s leading brands. In fact, MarqVision recently received a coveted 2022 Innovation Award from LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH). The company was recognized in the Data and Artificial Intelligence Special Mention category at this year’s Viva Technology show in Paris and has been named the brand protection provider for three LVMH Maisons. MarqVision has also established its value across its entire customer base, as its retention rate remains at greater than 97% across all logos.

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“Creative assets are under assault in today’s digital world, with content owners left largely unprotected as consumers get hoodwinked into buying fake goods and NFTs by sophisticated counterfeiters,” said Mark Lee, co-founder and CEO of MarqVision. “With this new round of funding, we can accelerate our mission of building the world’s first IP operating system to give brand owners full control of their IP portfolios.”

AI-Powered, Real-time Protection for Today and Tomorrow
MarqVision has developed technology that enables efficient removal of counterfeits and digital piracy – including product images, NFTs, and more – by automating the traditional anti-counterfeiting and anti-piracy process end-to-end (most brands fight fakes by hiring monitoring agents to manually find infringements and fill out the paperwork, a labor-intensive process involving a lot of repetitive chores). MarqVision’s proprietary AI models detect counterfeits with 95%+ accuracy and remove counterfeit sales at scale.

The company’s technology removes counterfeits from 1500+ global online marketplaces, covering ecommerce, social media and NFT platforms, while requiring little time investment from the brands leveraging its service. The company is poised to extend its services in the coming months to cover all aspects of creation, management, protection, and monetization of IP rights through a single IP operating system.

“What the MarqVision team has done over the last two years is astounding. They’ve built a world-class, highly adaptable solution to a rapidly escalating and evolving problem – and they continue to extend its capabilities in impactful ways,” said Cheuk Kim, Managing Director at Atinum Investment. “No one else is doing anything remotely this advanced, and it’s possible in large part due to Mark’s background not only as a respected technologist and startup founder, but as a legal expert with a specialization in trademark, copyright, and patent laws. He understands the holes counterfeiters exploit and is developing a new way forward.”

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