Most funding stories are more or less the same, which is why Re/code tries to avoid most of them: Company raises X amount of money, from Y companies, to do Z thing. Repeat.
Narrative Science Raises $10 Million More for Its Automated Writing Software
USAA, the financial services company for military members, is investing. It will also use the company’s software to generate reports for its clients.
Shutterstock/Moreno Soppelsa
Peter Kafka covered media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.
And that’s precisely the kind of thing that Narrative Science can now do without any humans at all: The Chicago-based company’s software can sift through big piles of data and automatically create stories on its own.
Some of them you might encounter on the Web: Forbes, for instance, uses Narrative Science to create earnings previews and reports.
But while Narrative Science originally got a lot of attention from journalists (like me) who wondered if it might replace journalists (like me), the bulk of the company’s work now comes from corporate customers, who use it to create internal reports for employees and customers.
Last year, we noted how the CIA and other intelligence services were using Narrative Science and investing in the company. Now, here’s another customer/investment announcement: The company has a new deal to create reports for the United Services Automobile Association, the financial services company that serves military members and their families; the USAA is also participating in a $10 million funding round.
The round, which includes money from previous investors Sapphire Ventures, Jump Capital and Battery Ventures, brings Narrative Science’s funding total to $32 million since 2010.
An automated version of this story might include a canned quote from CEO Stuart Frankel. But I got a live one! “We have machine-scaled data, yet we’re asking humans to draw conclusions,” he said. “We’re trying to fix that.”
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
