Already established in France, imagino offers a revenue-focused customer experience platform through its Customer Data Platform (CDP), enhancing marketing campaigns with clear, actionable insights. Founded in 2017 by Stéphane Dehoche, Arnaud Chapis, and Thomas Boudalier, the team has a successful track record, including the sale of Neolane to Adobe for $600 million.

The investment will support imagino's recruitment plans, expansion in the UK, and US launch, as well as ongoing product development. The company has tested its first generative AI feature, AI Copywriter, with further development planned for generative and predictive AI features.

The marketing automation market is projected to reach $15.36 billion, up from $6.85 billion in 2024, while the AI market is expected to grow by 24% annually, reaching over €200 billion by 2030. With AI accelerating content creation, a scalable platform for customer engagement is crucial for success.

Stéphane Dehoche, Co-Founder and CEO of imagino, commented: “From the start, we’ve always had significant ambitions for the company including international growth. With more than 60 brands seeing the value of imagino in France and the UK, we see even more opportunity in the United States, which is a key market for marketing automation.

“Our demonstrable experience as seasoned entrepreneurs – evident through Neolane’s success – meant our conversations with investors were clear and productive. imagino is on the same success path as Neolane, but even faster and with more promise.”

Cathay Innovation and henQ both have long-standing reputations supporting entrepreneurial businesses grow. Notable companies include Glovo (acquired by DeliveryHero), DataSine (acquired by Shutterstock) and Alkemics (acquired by Salsify) from Cathay Innovation and Mews, Sendcloud, Wemolo and Mendix from henQ.    

"The imagino team is led by the most experienced entrepreneurs with a potent combination of both tech and Go-To-Market expertise with a proven track record," says Bruno Delahaye, Partner at Cathay Innovation. "They have developed a powerful tool to transform data into actions that create personalised, sustainable and seamless customer experiences. AI and international are at the heart of its strategy, and we believe that our knowledge of AI applications and our cross-border expertise will be valuable as it scales."

"The term serial entrepreneur is too often used, but it truly applies to the founding team of imagino. After founding their first company, which was as early as 1991, the team has been executing super strongly – being increasingly successful with each company they’ve founded. In 2024, 33 years later, we are incredibly impressed with their unwavering drive and unstoppable momentum. We are confident they will build something even bigger and better with imagino than all the great achievements they have realised before,” adds Jan Andriessen, Partner at henQ.

Lindsay McEwan, Chief Revenue Officer at imagino, says, “Marketers in the UK are already well-acquainted with CDPs; but we hear time and time again from brands that they have a feeling of being let down by their tech investments seeing lacklustre results. In this increasingly competitive environment, marketers have no option but to deliver value for their organisations or fail. In just a short period of time, we’ve seen an overwhelmingly positive reaction from brands in the UK. This funding will ensure this momentum continues at scale.

McEwan continues, “imagino is perfectly positioned to support brands right now. Instead of demanding heavy investment costs, imagino augments the technology already in place to ensure it delivers maximum value.”