Highly downloaded keyboard app for Android SwiftKey has raised a Series B round of $17.5M (£11.3m) led by Index Ventures to expand its product portfolio and do a major US push. Co-founder and CEO Jon Reynolds is relocating to San Francisco to oversee the company’s US rollout.
Index Ventures led the round alongside previous investors Octopus Investment and a number of notable angel investors. New investors joining existing angels include Nick Hynes and Carl Uminski (Somo), Jon Craton (previously Cramer Systems), and the Cambridge Capital Group.
Founded in 2008, SwiftKey has previously received $4m (£2.5m) in equity funding. With revenues growing five-fold year on year, the company has tripled in size to 100 staff over the last 12 months, opened offices in Seoul and San Francisco and moved to a three-storey headquarters in London.
SwiftKey was founded by friends Jon Reynolds and Dr Ben Medlock who are Math geniuses and realised they could build an engine which could predict words and phrases as people typed them.
Its app – which makes you type much faster on a virtual keyboard, now the dominant form of text entry on smartphones and tablets – is a big seller on Google Play, and the company also licenses its technology to several leading OEMs, including Samsung. It’s never officially acknowledged that it did the same for Blackberry, but TechCrunch understands that this is the case. They have also pushed their technology into niches like the Medical market, where doctors are increasingly using tablets to enter in data about patients.