Freyda, the award-winning Fintech startup, announced that they have received backing from the Google for Startups Black Founders Fund. Almost 800 startups across Europe were screened with Freyda chosen as one of 30 high growth companies selected to receive funding, products and expert resources from Google.
The UK headquartered company helps pension funds, university endowments, asset managers and service providers who currently spend an estimated $3.3 billion annually on manual data processing from documents. Freyda applies AI and deep learning to extract, normalize and connect data from highly complex documents to help their customers focus on high-value, high-impact work.
Rachael Palmer, Head of VC and Start-up Partnerships, EMEA at Google said: “We’ve seen incredible talent apply to the US Black Founders Fund and the European Black Founders Immersion mentoring programme held last year, which makes us so excited to get to know and work with even more high calibre, Black-led start-ups from across Europe.
Our hope is that this will be part of a wider commitment to change from the entire start-up ecosystem. In the future we want to see more successful Black founders, more Black angel investors, and more Black General Partners at the most successful VC firms. There’s a lot of work to be done, but I am extremely pleased that Google is committed for the long term.”
The fund was secured in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement, with less than 0.25 per cent of venture capital funding going to Black-led start-ups in the UK, and only 38 Black founders receiving venture capital funding in the last 10 years. The fund is part of a $175m long-term commitment toward economic opportunity for Black business owners.
Marta Krupinska, Head of Google for Start-Ups UK said: “Startup success is often predicated on ‘founder-market fit’. We’ve been so impressed with Danielle’s industry knowledge and leadership and we’re confident she’ll continue delivering amazing growth and value to her clients.”
About Freyda
Freyda is a UK based Fintech founded by a team of financial professionals, technologists and PhDs. The Freyda platform leverages deep learning, natural language processing and artificial intelligence to help organisations and their workers free up time and resources for high-value, high-impact work and improved decision-making. For more info, visit www.freyda.io
About Google for Startups
Google for Startups is Google’s initiative to help startups thrive across every corner of the world. We bring the best of Google’s products, connections, and best practices to enable startups to build something better.