Content engine startup Emogi raises $12.6 million in Series A funding to accelerate growth and expand across multiple platforms

We’ve all seen emojis. Now you can express yourself better with fun emoji, stickers, and GIFs, smartly delivered to you. Emogi is a new startup taking emoji to the next level. The company that helps to enrich conversations and deeper emotional expression in messaging. Today Emogi announced it has closed $12.6 million in Series A funding to expands on the $2.7 million Emogi has raised prior to Series A and will be used to grow the company’s business and headcount as it expands across multiple platforms.  The current round is led by a group of existing investors.

Emogi was founded in 2012 by Travis Montaque, who was named Forbes’ 30 Under 30 for discovering this data-driven marketing method that provides greater emotional expression in today’s digital conversations. Emogi is a content engine for communication services that helps people have better conversations whether they’re texting on a chat app, commenting on a post, or sending a video to friends. By understanding the connection between content, words, people, places, and time, Emogi’s Emotion Engine serves up relevant and expressive content at the perfect moment – resulting in deeper emotional expression for users. Partnering with leading messaging platforms, Emogi’s technology redefines messaging as a new hub for brands and content creation.

Emogi is transforming the conversational space by tapping into a consumer desire to communicate with visual, expressive content. Via its Emotion Engine, Emogi serves up relevant conversational content in the form of animated stickers and GIFs on messaging platforms like Google’s Gboard, Facebook Messenger, and Plenty of Fish.

“This funding represents a big milestone in Emogi’s story,” said Emogi Founder and CEO Travis Montaque. “With this Series A, our team will be able to better deliver an intuitive experience where sharable content is personalized, topical, and easily accessible in user conversations. Thanks to our investors, we will continue to create a holistic experience for users around conversational content – driving stronger engagement and loyalty for app developers and brands.”

Emogi continues to gain momentum as more marketers leverage the platform to join consumer conversations. Among the leading brands working with Emogi are Bose Corporation, IKEA, McDonald’s, Moët Hennessy USA, NBCUniversal, P&G, and Reckitt Benckiser. Emogi empowers these companies to move beyond sticker packs that rely on individual consumer downloads and instead leverage Emogi’s direct integration within messaging apps themselves. In the case of the Bose Corporation, Emogi discovered that users were eight times more likely to share Bose branded headphone content over generic headphone emoji in messaging.

“We’re always looking for ways to reach our audience where they are spending most of their time,” said Andrea Harrison, CX Design Lead at Bose Corporation. “Emogi helps us tap into the power of contextual content in mobile messaging – delivering personalized content for consumers to use in relevant moments. We love having our brand content adapted to messaging-first formats and hope consumers do too.”

Hatzimemos/Libby, a venture firm based in New York City, has been a long-time supporter of Emogi’s growth and helped lead this round. According to Managing Partner and Co-Founder, Oliver B. Libby, “We are excited to support Emogi’s inspiring founder Travis Montaque and his terrific team. Emogi’s success to-date derives from the hard work of its dedicated, insightful professionals and the application of a rigorously technical approach. We are hopeful that Emogi’s technology becomes an important part of sharing content in conversations around the world.”