Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte Ltd led a US$50 million funding round in Amplitude Analytics, a San Francisco-based startup that tracks online user behaviour in real time.
GIC was joined by a group of existing US investors in the startup, including Sequoia Capital, Benchmark, Battery Ventures, IVP and Lead Edge Capital, Amplitude Analytics says in a statement on May 22.
GIC has been actively investing in technology and communications companies this year. Earlier this month, it teamed up with HPS Investment Partners to invest in Latin American call centre business Atento.
In April, it teamed up with US technology firm Equinix to form a $1 billion joint venture to develop data centres in Japan.
The wealth fund’s investment in Amplitude Analytics is timely as consumer behaviour and habits are changing in the wake of national lockdowns and social distancing to curb the spread of Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, according to a fund manager at a Singapore asset management firm.
“With the new normal due to the Covid-19 crisis, we believe people will be spending more time on online shopping, watching more videos or contents online. Therefore, there is a growing need to truly understand online user behaviour. This [analytics] is definitely a growing sector,” he tells Asia Asset Management, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Amplitude Analytics tracks one trillion user actions monthly for 40,000 digital products from more than 180 countries, according to information posted on the company’s website.
GIC does not disclose its official assets figure, saying only that it’s “well over” $100 billion. The Sovereign Wealth Centre estimates the fund had $510 billion of assets under management as of end-March 2019.
