This round of funding was led by CICC and Eight Square Capital while new investors who backed the funding include Accenture Ventures, and Sino Capital.

Existing investors like Intel Capital, GE Ventures, Chevron Technology Ventures, Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures and Shell Technology Ventures also participated during this round of funding.

Founded in 2012, the company has already raised $68m to date Maana. It is the Knowledge Platform that accelerates knowledge discovery to increase profitability for industrial and oil & gas companies.

Maana has pioneered “digital knowledge technology” for the enterprise which uses artificial intelligence to help companies in their data analysis.

Its patented Knowledge Graph combined with Maana’s proprietary AI algorithms, speeds up insight from data silos, to reveal their relationships in the context of optimizing operations and decision flows.

According to the company, its customers include GE, Chevron, Maersk, Saudi Aramco and Shell who use the technology to make decisions for optimizing key assets and workflows.

Maana has also formed a strategic alliance with Accenture to initially help oil and gas clients in their digital transformation.

Maana CEO and co-founder Babur Ozden said: “The latest investment will be used to scale our business globally and support our growing Fortune Global 500 customer base.

“This funding combined with the strategic alliance Maana has established with Accenture, demonstrates the demand for Maana’s cutting-edge AI-driven knowledge technology as a key enabler of digital transformation at the world’s largest industrial companies.”

With the strategic alliance, Accenture will be able extend its intelligent industry solutions such as Digital Plant Operations and Intelligent Operations Center with Maana’s knowledge platform which uses its patented knowledge graph and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms.

Accenture’s energy practice global managing director Andrew Smart said: “Knowledge-based decision-support platforms are of great interest to many of our oil and gas clients and teaming partners, some of whom are already using Maana’s solutions.

“We will collaborate with Maana and scale these solutions to help clients take advantage of digital knowledge for operational optimization.

CICC managing director Qing (Tracy) Gao and vice chairman of CICC Capital Overseas said: “We believe the Maana Knowledge Platform™ has the potential to become the essential digital knowledge layer of the world’s industrial data and deliver significant business value to industrial companies.”


Image: Maana Founder & Chief Executive Officer Babur Ozden. © Copyright 2017 MAANA, Inc.