Startup Dojo AI receives first investment

The Dojo AI startup, which has a platform for marketing professionals and was founded eight months ago by Portuguese entrepreneurs Duarte Garrido and António Alegria, has closed a pre- seed financing round of one million dollars (around 876 thousand euros, at the current conversion rate). The investment is the first it has received, but the company does not intend to stop there and is already aiming for a new capital increase at the beginning of next year. The goal is to close a seed round, the value of which has not yet been determined.

With a team of seven people and no vacancies open for this year, Dojo AI intends, with the funding, to “hire a world-class engineering team to build a truly disruptive product — not only in marketing but in the panorama of AI [artificial intelligence] platforms”, reveals António Alegria in response to Observador.

The company describes itself as the “first ‘AI Marketing Operating System’ that enables challenger brands to compete with large enterprises by automating and unifying all marketing operations on a single platform.” The product is already available on the market, but is still on a waiting list.

In a note announcing the investment, the startup explains that its core features are “specialized AI agents orchestrated by a ‘sensei’, a co-pilot that automatically integrates with tools such as Google Ads, Meta and LinkedIn, replacing more than ten fragmented tools with a digital twin with all the Marketing data, capable of executing omnichannel campaigns and content”. In other words, it is like having at your disposal a “complete marketing agency, in the form of AI agents, that cooperate in a data engine that is a digital twin of the entire marketing operation” of companies.

Dojo AI currently has over 20 clients, mostly in the US and UK, but it says this number is growing “rapidly”. These are mid-sized companies (with between 50 and 500 employees) such as PensionBee, Hubstar and Portuguese technology company Unbabel .

The financing round was led by the European fund Heartfelt Capital and had the majority of participation from angel investors, including those who hold senior positions in companies such as Broadvoice, ServiceNow, PensionBee, Expedia, Syngenta, Adobe or ProjectA.