• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 2, 2016

Blippar has raised another $54 million to further build out its augmented reality visual search engine. The company closed a Series D funding round led by Khazanah Nasional Berhad, the investment fund of the government of Malaysia, as well as investments from existing investors.

The goal is building out a visual catalog of every object in the world, using image recognition technology and machine learning that allows someone to point a mobile phone camera at an object to perform a search query that returns a variety of information. Some that overlays on top of the original image.

The funding will support the company's search for engineering talent that can help create one-of-a-kind campaigns for brand and their agency partners, according to Ambarish Mitra, Blippar co-founder and CEO. In March 2015, he told Search Marketing Daily some of those brands included Coca-Cola, General Mills, Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, and Nestlé.

The technology allows brands to build out campaigns where consumers can point a smartphone camera at an item such as a KitKat bar and the search query returns coupons or the calorie count and the ingredients. It may allow the user to download a song from Spotify.

Today about 60 engineers in San Francisco and Mountain View offices, along with more than 300 employees in 14 global offices, support clients.

The company has seen user adoption rise in the past year -- climbing to more than 65 million users -- and partnerships with some of the biggest and most exciting media owners and brands. The company's technology has moved more toward supporting real-time content. Partnerships now include Condé Nast, Time Inc., Procter & Gamble, Kraft, Heinz, Universal Pictures, Disney and Jaguar.

The company also plans to use the funding to build out its business in the education sector by encouraging students to get more information about virtual objects and monuments, for example, especially in countries with poor language skills and a lack of resources.