Predictive analytics startup SiteZeus, Inc. has raised $1.5 Series B in a round led by Chuck Cooper and a number of unnamed additional backers.

Founded in 2013, SiteZeus’ platform offers predictive analytics for real-world sites through the combination of artificial intelligence, Big Data, and data visualization technology.

The platform is designed for retail, restaurant, and hospitality brands with more than ten locations that want to build, rent, or renovate new locations for branches.

Data including revenue from current locations is combined with the proposed sites’ demographics, sociographics, climate data, transportation options, nearby competitors, churches and schools, parking, visibility, and other info, with information coming from credit card companies, consumer research provider Nielsen, customer/business information provider Acxiom and even Google.

With all that data at hand, SiteZeus is then able to project the potential revenue for any site being considered. Since it has gone into use, revenue projections were only out of a maximum of 12 percent in some cases, whereas in others it was often dead on the mark.

The company says it has seen tremendous growth with 462 percent annualized Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) revenue growth in first quarter of 2016, 21 percent month by month growth since 2015 and 634 percent year-over-year total revenue growth.

“The real estate industry has historically lagged from an innovation and technology standpoint, leading to massive gaps and opportunities that present themselves through more sophisticated intelligence and analytics efficiency needs,” SiteZeus Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer Hannibal Baldwin said in a statement sent to SiliconANGLE. “We built a platform that solves for both of these gaps simultaneously by delivering a solution that is both extremely intuitive yet powerfully intelligent. Both of these combined create an experience that can reach the masses, yet add exponential value to critical location based decisions.”

Interesting niche

While SiteZeus is never going to have millions of customers, predictive analytics for retail is an interesting niche that has the potential to grow as chain stores, in particular, look at better ways of planning their expansions.

Including the new round SiteZeus has raised $4.15 million to-date; previous investors Baldwin Beach Capital and Chris Sullivan.

The company said it would use the new funding to expand their head court and launch new ways to reach active or potential customers and new partnerships with top brands in key industries.

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