Inkitt raises $59 million

The e-book start-up wants to further conquer the North American market in particular. German publishers are well represented among the investors.

In 2019, Inkitt raised 16 million US dollars, but has now raised 59 million US dollars. The Series B financing round was led by Scott Sandell, Managing Director of US venture capitalist New Enterprise Associates. Other well-known names such as Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer Verlag, Stefan von Holtzbrinck from Holtzbrinck Digital, the publisher's venture capitalist, and Michael Lynton, CEO of Snap, are also involved. The existing investors Kleiner Perkins, HV Capital, Redalpine and Speedinvest are also participating. According to information from Techcrunch, Inkitt is now worth 390 million US dollars.

The Berlin-based e-book start-up intends to invest the money in expanding its technology and further developing its algorithms. The team of 80 employees is also to be expanded, especially for the North American market. For Inkitt, the USA is the most important market for expansion because many of the books are published in English.

The start-up offers amateur authors the opportunity to publish their stories, which Inkitt analyzes with the help of AI and evaluates the response from readers. This can result in a book contract; US authors have made millions with this service. The Berlin-based company also has a reading app that provides musical accompaniment to the texts. Inkitt makes 38 million US dollars a year from the app alone, as Techcrunch reports.

Founded in 2013 by Ali Albazaz, the start-up claims to have seven million users and 300,000 writers.