Social media tracker Banjo gets $100m funding

Banjo, a tech startup that searches for trends and breaking news events on social media, announced Thursday it raised $100 million in a funding round led by Japan's SoftBank.

"We are building a crystal ball -- a way to see and know virtually everything happening across the globe the moment it happens," the company said in a statement announcing the latest funding which also includes a venture capital firm.

Banjo scours social media feeds around the world to help organize information around events as they happen, from live concerts to earthquakes and other natural disasters.

The new funding will fuel an expansion to help people "know and understand everything, about any location, at any time, creating value for everyone, from individuals to corporations to continents," the company said.    

"We are working on connecting the world's disparate real-time data streams and harnessing them into one unified source of unmatched insights. The results are profound: faster emergency response, safer driving conditions, smarter marketing decisions, more efficient use of energy and much more."

Nikesh Arora, vice chairman at the Japanese telecom and tech giant SoftBank, said in the statement: "Banjo is in an interesting space, bringing together the ideas of big data, social, local, mobile and trying to derive value from that combination for both consumers and businesses. I am excited by what I have seen so far, and think this has the potential to be very interesting, and big."