Particle, an AI-powered news platform, has successfully raised $10.9 million in Series A funding, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from German media giant Axel Springer. This investment boosts Particle's mission to develop an AI-driven news app that offers a personalized, multi-perspective view of the news to its users.
The fresh capital injection follows a $4.4 million seed round earlier this year, backed by Kindred Ventures, Adverb Ventures, Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, Behance founder Scott Belsky, and others. With this new funding, Particle aims to expand its team, deepen publisher collaborations, and gear up for its upcoming US launch.
At the heart of Particle's mission is a desire to create a beautiful, personalized, and multi-perspective news experience powered by AI. The app aims to cut through the noise, helping readers understand the stories that matter most to them faster and more comprehensively. By analyzing how a story is being reported from various angles, Particle seeks to provide a well-rounded view of current events.
"We wanted to build an experience for consumers that really helps them cut through the noise and that helps them understand more [and] what's going on faster," explains co-founder Sara Beykpour. "And we want to do that in a way that is a sustainable, win-win situation for both the readers that are consuming and the publishers and the journalists that are producing the content."
Particle's approach is unique in that it focuses not on individual articles, but on stories as a whole, as told by multiple outlets. This allows readers to easily access a range of perspectives without getting bogged down in duplicative content. Under the hood, Particle leverages AI technologies like GPT-4o to summarize the news.
Crucially, Particle recognizes that its success is intertwined with that of the publishers and journalists who create the content it curates. To that end, the startup has signed its first content deal with Reuters, subscribing to the wire service's newswire to ensure access to high-quality reporting. Particle is also actively inviting other publishers and journalists to collaborate on developing new, sustainable business models for the AI era.
"We're still building but we want to work with publishers to develop a model that's gonna work," Beykpour emphasizes. "We don't think that can happen overnight. And we also don't want to build that in a silo. We want to build that in collaboration with publishers to make sure that it's a win-win."
As part of its Series A, Particle is welcoming Lightspeed's Michael Mignano to its board. The startup has also brought on David Brinker, former VP of content partnerships at Snap, and Tony Haile, former CEO of digital news startup Scroll, as official advisors.
While Particle's app is still in private beta testing with a small group on iOS, the company has big plans for the future, including expanding to the web and Android. As it continues to grow and evolve, Particle remains committed to its vision of a world where staying informed is both effortless and enriching – a world where AI and journalism work hand in hand to empower readers like never before.