Kahoona Inc., a first-party data generation and activation technology for the open web aimed at creating a digital ecosystem that preserves user privacy, announced today that it has closed $4.5 million in Series Seed financing led by Global Founders Capital (GFC), followed by deep-tech focused Cardumen Capital, Plug and Play and Fourth Realm. Leading angel investors from Amazon, IronSource, NBC Universal, Verizon and SAP participated as well. “The tectonic privacy-related measures present opportunities for digital businesses to rethink their data strategy with the purpose of sustaining long-term growth while preserving users’ privacy. We’re thrilled to be part of the Kahoona Team on their journey to disrupt the future of the internet,” said David Citron, Partner at Global Founders Capital.

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Apple’s IDFA changes followed by Google’s pledge to remove third-party cookies from Chrome are forcing businesses to adapt or face financial losses. With a mission of promoting digital responsibility, Kahoona helps digital publishers, e-commerce merchants and brands generate accurate, scalable, actionable and privacy-preserving user data. “Using advanced AI models and deep behavioral insights, we were able to bridge the gap between users’ right for privacy and the ever-growing need for data by content providers and digital stores,” said Gal Rapoport, Kahoona’s co-founder and CEO. On average, 68 percent of visitors on a site are new users. Kahoona generates anonymized user profiles in real time with the purpose of enabling personalization to solve the cold-start problem and unlocking brand marketing dollars.

Capitalizing on the success with Israel’s top media outlets, Kahoona will allocate its seed capital to accelerating R&D efforts, growing its operations and expanding its initial success to the US market. “Regulatory directives followed by large tech platforms’ shift towards privacy have created much turmoil in the market, allowing us to bring innovative technology to multiple verticals,” said Ohad Tzur, co-founder and COO.

Founded by Technion and MIT graduates, Gal Rapoport, Alon Ashkenasi and Ohad Tzur, Kahoona’s leadership team had previously led product development and spearheaded sales and partnership organizations at Amazon, Intel and Google. The company is currently hiring data scientists and developers to its R&D Center in Tel Aviv and Sales and Marketing positions in its U.S. headquarters in San Diego, CA.

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