Participated · Equity · Mar 2015

SmartNews operates the SmartNews news app in Japan and the United States, using algorithms and a mobile-optimized interface to surface quality information. The company was founded on June 15, 2012 and frames its mission as delivering high-quality information to those who need it. SmartNews is investing in product evolution and user experience improvements across Japan and the U.S., including launching a paid subscription service, SmartNews+, in December 2023. Recent corporate moves to support growth include hiring Cory Ondrejka (former Google VP of Product Management) as CTO in October 2023 and announcing a business partnership with NTT Docomo in November 2023. The company plans to use new funding to strengthen its U.S. operations, expand its advertising business, and make business growth investments to enhance product features and user experience. SmartNews operates a news aggregation app and website that uses machine learning to personalize article selection and a “News From All Sides” feature to surface diverse political perspectives. Its product suite includes SmartView (a quick-reading, offline-capable format), a COVID-19 vaccine dashboard, a U.S. election dashboard, and recent trackers for hurricanes, wildfires, and crime/safety. The company monetizes primarily through advertising—selling inline and video ads and sharing revenue with publishers—and reports relationships with more than 3,000 global publishing partners; over 75% of partners use SmartView and more than 70% of pageviews originate from SmartView. The app has about 85 million lifetime downloads (14 million in the past year), with Japan accounting for 59% of installs; the company said U.S. monthly active users doubled over the last year but declined to share current MAUs. Founded in 2012 and launched in the U.S. in 2014, SmartNews has grown its headcount to roughly 500 people globally and plans to expand further in the U.S., aiming to double its U.S. staff. The company says new funds will be used to develop more U.S.-focused consumer health and safety features and to expand its team. SmartNews is a global news discovery company that leverages machine learning and relationships with over 400 U.S. publisher partners to deliver quality information. The company is led by co-founder and CEO Ken Suzuki and maintains offices and employees in Tokyo, San Francisco, Palo Alto, Shanghai, and New York. In September 2019 SmartNews released its “News From All Sides” political slider, and in October 2019 it launched SmartView First, a licensing program that includes more than 30 major content providers such as BBC, Business Insider, Bloomberg, BuzzFeed, and Reuters. SmartNews completed a $92M Series E financing, bringing total funding to $182M and valuing the company at $1.2B. The round will fund expansion of global engineering teams across mobile, backend, and machine learning and support accelerated growth in the U.S. and worldwide. SmartNews is a Japan-founded news-aggregation app that curates articles from roughly 1,500 publications and surfaces stories based on users' reading activity via machine-learning algorithms. The app has approached 20 million downloads and counts about 10 million users in Japan, which remains its largest market. In Japan SmartNews monetizes through inline advertising, video ads, and deals with publishers around its 'SmartViews' fast-loading format; U.S. and other international markets are still advertising-free. The company intends to use new funding to grow its user base, expand revenues outside Japan, hire talent, and further develop its machine-learning news-combing technology. SmartNews differentiates itself with bottom-up algorithmic curation rather than human editorial selection and has become a prominent ad network for news publishers in Japan. SmartNews is a news recommendation and aggregation app built around machine-learning algorithms that surface articles based on clicks, pauses and reading patterns. The app has about 10 million downloads, roughly 1 million monthly active users (MAUs) in the U.S. and around 4 million MAUs in Japan, and is present in over 150 markets. SmartNews works with more than 150 publishers globally and has begun a small ad rollout in Japan; subscriptions and paywalls are planned for later. The company says ads will not launch in the U.S. until it grows its U.S. MAUs, and it is focused on building publisher monetization tools. The new funding will be used to expand its U.S. presence and staff up a San Francisco office, with hires targeted at machine-learning and data-science specialists.