Akeneo is a technology company that develops

product information management Product information management (PIM) is the process of managing all the information required to market and sell products through distribution channels. This product data is created by an internal organization to support a multichannel marketing s ...

(PIM) and product data intelligence software to improve

customer experience Customer experience (CX) is a totality of cognitive, affective, sensory, and behavioral consumer responses during all stages of the consumption process including pre-purchase, consumption, and post-purchase stages. Pine and Gilmore described the ...

. The company was founded in 2013 by Frédéric de Gombert, Benoit Jacquemont, Nicolas Dupont and Yoav Kutner. Akeneo is headquartered in

Nantes, France Nantes (, , ; Gallo: or ; ) is a city in Loire-Atlantique on the Loire, from the Atlantic coast. The city is the sixth largest in France, with a population of 314,138 in Nantes proper and a metropolitan area of nearly 1 million inhabita ...

and has offices in the

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United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = '' Plus ultra'' ( Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

and Australia with more than 400 employees. It has worked with customers including

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Midland Scientific Midland Scientific is a woman-owned, full-line laboratory products distributor with offices in Nebraska, Iowa, Colorado, South Dakota, and Texas. Midland Scientific is a provider of laboratory supplies including chemicals, reagents, solut ...

Air Liquide Air Liquide S.A. (; ; literally " liquid air"), is a French multinational company which supplies industrial gases and services to various industries including medical, chemical and electronic manufacturers. Founded in 1902, after Linde it is ...

, Rexel, Babolat,

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and

Auchan Auchan () is a French multinational retail group headquartered in Croix, France. It was founded in 1961 by Gérard Mulliez and is owned by the Mulliez family, who has 95% stake in the company. With 354,851 employees, of which 261,000 have 5% ...

History

Before founding Akeneo, Frédéric de Gombert, Benoit Jacquemont and Nicolas Dupont had worked together at the

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

company, Smile. They began developing a single product database to compete with Excel and brought Yoav Kutner onboard in founding Akeneo. The name comes from the Greek word akene, like the achenes' fruits that contains all the fruits' information and spread them along the winds. The company started producing a system for managing product information for use across distribution channels. Available under the open source license 3.0, the first public beta of Akeneo PIM was released in September 2013. In January 2016, the company's chief executive officer, Frédéric de Gombert, received the prize Young Entrepreneur Prize in Digital from the French newspaper, ''

La Tribune ''La Tribune'' () is a French weekly financial newspaper founded in 1985 by Bruno Bertez. Its main competitor is the French newspaper '' Les Échos'', which is currently owned by LVMH. From 1993 to 2007, ''La Tribune'' was part of LVMH. In 2010 ...

''. Akeneo was a co-founder and partner of the Open Source School created by Smile and the École privée des sciences informatiques. The company also opened offices in Düsseldorf, Germany and Boston, Massachusetts during early 2016. The

Deloitte Technology Fast 500 The Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Awards are run and moderated by international professional services group Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited. They recognize the 500 fastest-growing technology companies in regions around the world. Winners include ...

named Akeneo on its EMEA list for 2017. Akeneo expanded into Israel after acquiring Sigmento, product data automation startup company. The acquisition worked to merge Sigmento's technology with Akeneo's products for data enrichment automation. The company also opened offices in Spain, Poland and the United Kingdom during early 2018. By late 2018, Akeneo had partnered with Magento to integrate its PIM software with the

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain mana ...

system. In March 2019, the company expanded into Italy and later announced that it would be opening an office in Australia in 2020. Akeneo was recognized as a leader in product information management applications on an IDC Marketscape report in late 2019.

Funding

Before beginning official funding, KIMA Venture and Nestadio Capital contributed €350,000 to the company in 2013. In September 2014, Akeneo received initial funding of $2.3 million led by Alven Capital. The company raised a

Series B A venture round is a type of funding round used for venture capital financing, by which startup companies obtain investment, generally from venture capitalists and other institutional investors. The availability of venture funding is among the ...

funding round of $13 million led by Partech Ventures in March 2017.

Salesforce Ventures Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides customer relationship management (CRM) software and applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, a ...

made a strategic investment in the company as it continued to expand in North America. It completed a $46 million

Series C A venture round is a type of funding round used for venture capital financing, by which startup companies obtain investment, generally from venture capitalists and other institutional investors. The availability of venture funding is among the ...

funding round in September 2019 led by

Summit Partners Summit Partners is an American private equity firm based in Boston, Massachusetts. The firm focuses on investing in technology, healthcare, life sciences and other growth industries. Background Summit Partners was founded in 1984 by Roe St ...

. Finally, a last $135 million Serie D funding was completed in March 2022, always led by

Products

Akeneo's products include two versions of its open-source PIM software: a free community edition (CE) as well as an enterprise

software as a service Software as a service (SaaS ) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software. SaaS is co ...

(SaaS) edition (EE). More than 70,000 companies use the free community edition (CE) version. Akeneo PIM open source software is built under license OSL 3.0 and written in PHP. In addition, the company launched additional modules for onboarding product information from suppliers, the Akeneo Onboarder, content syndication and AI-based curation of product content capabilities. In February 2020, the company released PIM 4.0 that included features such an asset manager, data quality insights, product attribute mapping and connection management by using API-based integration. Akeneo PIM is featured in the leader quadrant on the G2 PIM vendor grid.

Versions

''Note that the names of CE releases are based on

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episodes, and EE releases on vegetals that have akenes.''

References

{{Reflist

External links

Official website
Free content management systems Software companies of France Software using the Open Software License