Narrativa, a startup that uses proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) to translate data into accessible narrative content, has secured funding from twofour54, Abu Dhabi’s media free zone as well as a number of media companies and angel investors in Europe, the United States and the UAE. Funds raised in this round will go towards team expansion, sales and marketing, and technology development to further enhance the evolution of Narrativa’s GabrieleAI technology. It will also enable Narrativa to penetrate the wider MENA market and expand beyond its current roster of clients in the media, e-commerce, and enterprise reporting space to those in financial services, and oil and gas.

David Llorente, CEO of Narrativa claims that the company is “the only company worldwide to automatically generate content in Arabic”.

“This latest round of funding shows strong confidence in Narrativa’s growth and future prospects. The rise of big data, the rapid development of computing capabilities and the evolution of AI are revolutionising the way we produce and consume content. Narrativa’s AI technology helps companies in the media, e-commerce and enterprise reporting space to exponentially increase the amount of content generated, significantly reduce costs, and develop new revenue streams.”

Narrativa’s client base is primarily in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Europe.

Speaking about twofour54’s role in the project, Maryam AlMheiri, CEO of the Media Zone Authority – Abu Dhabi and twofour54, added: “Our investment in Narrativa is in line with our vision to champion the creative community and foster the production of content. The MENA region provides ample opportunities for expansion, and is bolstered by a young, dynamic, tech-savvy population that has one of the highest consumptions of social media per capita worldwide. Less than 2% of online content is in Arabic; making start-ups like Narrativa so valuable. We are thrilled to be part of Narrativa’s next stage of its growth story.”

Prior to this round, Narrativa has previously participated in Hamburg’s Next Media Accelerator and Abu Dhabi’s Flat6Labs start-up accelerator programmes, from where it has raised USD 250,000.

Narrativa’s long-term vision is to target the global digital content licensing market, which is estimated to be worth $4bn.