Cien Opens R&D Headquarters in Barcelona

La Vanguardia (1st edition) April 18, 2017.

By Mar GALTÉS Barcelona

Cien Inc, a company based in Miami, FL, is dedicated to artificial intelligence. They have installed its R&D center in Barcelona. The company initially started with 15 people and has plans to reach the 100 employees in the next 18 months.

Cien was founded in mid-2016. By the end of the year, it closed its first round of seed capital of a million dollars, contributed by the founding team and accredited investors. The objective of this financing was to develop a mobile tool based on artificial intelligence that improves productivity of sales and create a center of operations and product development in Barcelona.

“We chose Barcelona for the excellent relationship between cost and quality of life, which attracts first-rate talent from around the world. The current strength of the dollar also makes it a very attractive option, “said Rob Käll, Cien’s CEO and co-founder. Barcelona’s election took place after studying other locations such as San Francisco, Boston, New York, London, Amsterdam and Berlin. Cien highlights the academic strength of the city – after already establishing links with Pompeu Fabra and the Barcelona Graduate School of Business – and emphasizes the support received by Barcelona Activa for its implementation.

Cien develops tools to identify areas of improvement in sales teams and help to report relevant metrics. This ensures that it converts the “predictive analysis” into “prescriptive analysis.” Cien is geared towards B2B sales teams and technology companies, such as SaaS. “Optimizing sales productivity is the fastest way for a company to grow faster and more profitably,” predicts Cien. This incorporates a variable analysis that could not be measured before, such as the mood of the equipment or external tendencies.

Rob Käll has founded three other software companies in Miami, and arrived in Barcelona in 2014 to advise RealPage in the purchase of Catalan Kigo.