Founded in Tokyo, Japan in 2012, SmartNews is an app that uses machine learning to help users find news beyond the filter bubble. “Our algorithms evaluate tens of millions of articles, behaviors and social interactions to deliver only the most interesting and important stories on a global scale—a fascinating engineering challenge that has attracted a world-class data science and engineering team” (SmartNews).
SmartNews was recently valued at $1.1billion and has over 20 million monthly active users in the U.S. and Japan. The company is growing at a rate of 500% per year, and users are using SmartNews to update themselves on politics, sports, and entertainment. “To make money, the company sells inline advertising, video ads and deals with publishers to sell ads against “SmartViews,” its equivalent of Google’s AMP or Facebook’s Instant Articles”(TechCrunch).
Sources:
- https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/04/news-discovery-app-smartnews-valued-at-1-1b/
- https://about.smartnews.com/en/
- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-04/smartnews-becomes-first-unicorn-news-startup-since-2015