A START-UP company which aims to help broadcasters and publishers obtain the digital rights to Instagram photographs has secured almost £250,000 in seed funding.
Pixey.io was set up by Sarah Stenhouse and is based in Edinburgh. She said the cash would be used to hire five members of staff over the next six months with a view to introducing artificial intelligence (AI) technology and growing its international profile.
Equity Gap, Gabriel and Scottish Investment Bank have invested a total of £213,000 with a further £30,000 from Robin Knox and Paul Walton of Intelligent Point of Sale.
A long-time user of popular social media service Instagram, Ms Stenhouse said the idea for the business came when she was trying to source an image in her former role at an advertising agency.
Instagram is a photo-sharing network, with 800 million monthly active users.
Pixey.io contacts photographers posting on Instagram to request use of their images and arranges copyright and payment. The stock photography market is estimated to be worth $3 billion.
Since the business’ inception she has supplied a number of clients including a major high street bank and an international advertising firm. Pixey.io was also a finalist in Deloitte’s Disrupt the Enterprise 2017 awards, which recognises technology start-ups with potential.
Mr Stenhouse said: “This funding is huge for us and will move us on far more quickly than we could have otherwise. We can now bring in AI technology to effectively source images as well as boosting our profile in the US and Europe.
“We want to create a community with our photographers and provide a mixture of lifestyle and business content.”
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