Edinburgh's Machine Labs secures £1m funds injection and Amazon grant

Edinburgh tech outfit Machine Labs has secured a funding injection of £1 million after making progress in the crucial US market.

Headquartered in Edinburgh, Machine Labs is an automated ecommerce marketing platform that harnesses data science to improve email communications, develop quality customer relationships and exponentially boost sales. Picture: Neil Hanna Photography www.neilhannaphotography.co.uk

The seed extension round has been led by Techstart Ventures alongside company founders, the angel investors Bill Dobbie and Richard Freedman, and the British Business Bank.

An additional £100,000 was provided in grant funding by Amazon and Scottish Enterprise.

The Covid-19 pandemic caused disruption to the funding round and forced the cancellation of several key business meetings in North America, the firm noted, but it also resulted in an increase of 57 per cent in usage of Shopify as high street shops were forced to switch to e-commerce.

Machine Labs’ founder and chief executive Andrew Veitch said: “We’ve had a great first year with over 300 e-commerce stores from 23 different countries choosing Machine Labs to increase their sales.

“Right now, we work exclusively with Shopify who power over one million web shops around the world, of which 80,000 are in the UK. We are planning to add other e-commerce platforms next year.”

He added: “This was far from the ideal time to be raising money. Fortunately, we had made enough progress in the critical US market, which accounts for most of our customers, to get the support from investors for our next step.

“I’m hugely grateful to everyone who wrote a cheque at this difficult time. I’m excited about where we will be in 2021.”

The company has now raised more than £2m following the original seed funding round in June 2019.

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