Cambridge Innovation Capital and Parkwalk Advisors have both returned to back a $32.6m series B round for Cytora, an insurance technology spinout of Cambridge.
Cytora, a UK-based insurance technology spinout of University of Cambridge, raised £25m ($32.6m) in a series B round today backed by Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC), the patient capital fund affiliated with the university.
Parkwalk Advisors, the fund management subsidiary of commercialisation firm IP Group, also participated in the round, which was led by venture capital firm EQT Ventures and included assorted angel investors.
Founded in 2014, Cytora has built a commercial insurance underwriting platform that relies on artificial intelligence technology to determine risks based on public data such as property construction features and local weather, and proprietary data held by insurance providers.
The platform enables programmatic underwriting, reducing the process from a seven-day workflow to a 30-second mechanism.
It is aimed at underwriters dealing with premiums of more than $650,000 and enterprise clients who are purchasing insurance products directly with average premiums of $1300 to $6500.
The series B round will allow Cytora to expand its offering and expand into additional markets.
Cytora previously obtained $5.9m in funding from CIC, insurance provider QBE Insurance and financial services conglomerate Starr Companies in December 2017.
The spinout had already obtained $3.2m in January 2017 led by Parkwalk Advisors, with participation from tech transfer office Cambridge Enterprise, neurolinguistics programming developer iLexIR and a range of angel investors.
Cambridge Enterprise had led a 2015 round of undisclosed size, with commitments from Parkwalk and assorted private investors, after Accelerate Cambridge, an accelerator run by the university’s Judge Business School, had supplied some $23,000 in 2013.
