Next Glass develops software and experiences connecting consumers, retailers, and producers in the beverage alcohol industry through consumer platforms Untappd and BeerAdvocate and business products such as Untappd for Business and Untappd Marketplace. Untappd has 8 million users globally with nearly 1 billion check‑ins, and Untappd for Business is used by nearly 20,000 venues in 75 countries. The company recently launched Untappd Marketplace and established a Live! division in late 2019 to produce festivals and events. Next Glass plans to use investment proceeds to fuel product innovation, accelerate go‑to‑market efforts, and pursue add‑on acquisitions of technology platforms serving producers, wholesalers, resellers and consumers. In response to COVID‑19 the company deferred renewals and offered new customers 80% off their first month, cumulatively representing nearly $2 million of near‑term relief, and—supported by PSG—established a $2 million Small‑to‑Medium Sized Business Support Fund. The company was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in Wilmington, NC, with offices in Charlotte and Durham. Next Glass has built a "wine genome cellar" — a chemically sequenced database — and uses machine learning to score beers and wines on a 0–100 scale to predict user preferences. The app includes social features, caloric content per glass, a "hangover rating," and can recommend less expensive bottles with similar chemical profiles. Onboarding requires users to swipe through and rate bottles to build a taste profile; the article notes that initial setup can be arduous and some bottles were missing from the search. To populate the database quickly the team conducted a Beer Census, visiting 642 breweries, collecting 15,350 bottles and testing over 12,452 of them. The company has a roadmap to expand the database and add spirits such as whiskey and vodka, and founders have hinted at broader applications beyond alcohol. The team has raised a $3.8 million seed to date from undisclosed angel investors.

Total raised

$4M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Seed

Latest activity

Nov 2014