Northern Ireland retail AI specialist raises £3.25million in Praetura-backed funding round

A Northern Ireland software business that provides AI insights to ecommerce retailers has secured a £3.25million Series A investment led by Praetura Ventures.

Belfast-based Ocula has developed an AI tool, Ocula Boost, to help brands such as Boots and AO.com convert more sales, improve their customer experience and decrease the time spent manually enhancing product pages.

The business currently has more than 25 major customers and is aiming to triple its client base over the next 24 months.

Ocula uses AI and large language models to enhance product pages, creating insight into the improvements that can be made and by auto-generating critical content, such as product descriptions.

In addition to Manchester-based Praetura Ventures, Ocula has also raised further investment from long term investor Castelnau Group and Lloyds Banking Group and its fintech investment team.

The company will use the investment to scale its sales and technology teams, as well as developing new and existing product teams.

Thomas McKenna, Ocula co-founder and chief executive, said: "We have created something special at Ocula from both a product and culture perspective. Users consistently tell us that our generative AI is levelling the playing field with their most advanced competitors. We've achieved this by bringing together some of the brightest science, engineering and product talent in the UK and beyond.

"This investment will see us go faster when it comes to UK and US expansion and deliver the next generation of exciting AI features to clients."

Peter Carway, investment director at Praetura Ventures, explained: "AI's role within ecommerce has grown exponentially over the past several years. There's now a wealth of incredibly exciting developments for retailers of all sizes, as proved by the work being done by Ocula.

"Having invested in this space before, we were drawn to Ocula's proposition and suite of highly sophisticated products as well as the strength of Ocula's co-founders Thomas and Gregory, who we're looking forward to supporting with more than money."

Richard Brown, CEO of Castelnau, a founding shareholder of Ocula, added: "We are pleased to welcome Praetura on board, and look forward to working closely with them and their network. This investment round will give Ocula the runway to further expand their team, enhance their products and continue to increase their client base. As a long-term investor in Ocula, we are looking forward to seeing the growth this should deliver."