Dutch startup Altura secures €3M for its AI-powered bid management software: Know more

Utrecht-based Altura, a tendering platform, announced that it has secured €3M in a fresh round of funding.

Altura, which unveiled its initial software iteration two years ago, initiated discussions with investors Matthijs Huiskamp and Jordi van der Hek for further growth. 

Curiosity VC, drawn by Altura’s emphasis on Artificial Intelligence, expressed interest and became a partner. Fortino Capital joined as a co-investor, bolstering Altura’s prospects for expansion.

Wouter Goossens, Investment Director at Fortino Capital, says, “We see that companies are increasingly buying through Request for X (RFXs).”

“Matthijs and Jordi have the ambition to become category leaders with software to make bid management more efficient and effective. This objective and the speed at which the company is currently growing really appeal to us.”

Transforming the bid management market

According to Altura, government agencies and organisations are increasingly using complex procurement processes like RFX, demanding extensive documentation from participants.

Altura’s AI-powered software simplifies proposal creation and management and aims to transform interactions between government organisations, companies, and B2B collaborations.

Matthijs Huiskamp, founder and CEO of Altura, says, “I see inefficiency in how companies and governments do business with other parties. This is because there is so much manual work and unnecessary steps.”

“With the knowledge and automation in our software, those factors are removed and with that, there is more room for vision, creativity, strategy and focus. AI plays the leading role in this.”

According to a statement by Altura, AI disruption is reshaping bid management, altering how large companies operate and how government spending is allocated. Altura leverages AI to embrace and expedite this change, automating manual tasks with contextual data from companies.

Altura’s bid management software integrates Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and Custom Prompting, alongside Vector and Graph database technologies. 

This approach enables support for every phase of the proposal process, spanning from identifying new opportunities to project management and data analysis.

The company’s software can scrape product data from platforms, accurately scan information from documents, estimate financial risks, and organise content into a knowledge library. 

Leveraging the data extracted from documentation, the software generates automated actions including schedules, task lists, proposal texts, and other content, thereby minimising manual tasks.

Capital utilisation

Altura will use the funding to enhance its software and expand its team with top tech talent. The company aims to introduce additional products and enhance support services to streamline processes and elevate overall quality.

Herman Kienhuis, managing partner at Curiosity VC, says, “We have researched the whole market in the field of AI in bid software and see that Altura is the best party.”

“They use new AI technologies for finding and analysing tenders and RFXs, for automating time-consuming manual tasks and also as an assistant for proposal writing. This growth capital will allow them to accelerate their product development and commercial rollout.”