Gresham House Ventures invests £5m of growth capital into Preservica
1 December 2021
Investing on behalf of the Mobeus VCTs, Gresham House Ventures has provided £5m in funding for Preservica’s unique cloud-hosted active digital preservation platform, accelerating the next chapter of growth in product innovation.
Preservica’s cloud-hosted SaaS Active Digital Preservation platform – which ensures critical long-term content can always be read and accessed independently of its original format – is trusted by thousands of organisations worldwide including government, business, libraries and museums, academic institutions, national archives and pan-national institutions.
“The acceleration in digital transformation and cloud-first initiatives over the last year has put increased focus on the way long-term digital content is governed and used.” says Mike Quinn, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Preservica
“This has driven rapid growth in the adoption of Preservica’s software with the user community climbing by over 500% in 2021 including more than 1,700 users of our new Preservica Starter edition. The investment is a real game-changer that will enable us to deliver on our vision to make powerful Active Digital Preservation a simple and seamless part of how we all create, manage and protect digital content.”
Preservica will also use the investment to extend its leadership in the preservation of complex digital formats such as Social Media, Websites, multipage books, 3D, CAD, GIS, and email, as well as further streamline preservation workflows with a new intuitive user interface, a powerful new access portal and the use of AI and Machine Learning for faster content classification, transcription and discovery.
In addition, Preservica will increase investment in its core Active Digital Preservation platform further optimising cloud scalability and security and extending APIs to make it even easier to integrate digital preservation into content and discovery systems.
“Preservica is a great example of our team backing winners through a number of investment rounds to build a significant equity stake over time.” says Matt Mead, Venture Partner at Gresham House Ventures.
“We believe that digital preservation is a market with real potential and that Mike and the team have the opportunity to drive Preservica to become a business of real scale. We are delighted to continue our support for them on this exciting journey.”
Preservica is developing a Digital Preservation Sustainability Charter, a set of principles that underpin the long-term sustainability and durability of digital preservation services.
This will extend beyond product capabilities to encompass wider long-term dependencies such as how providers manage customer data, develop and innovate software, engage with users, ensure financial viability, undertake corporate governance and addresses environmental concerns.
