The new Genius name will make it more accessible and intelligible to communities reading and writing annotations outside of rap. The new funding brings Genius to $56.8 million in total, which it plans to spend hiring engineers, designers, and community leaders. He’s know to many as a champion of Detroit’s rebirth. Genius‘ big new investor Gilbert is the founder and chairman of Rock Ventures and Quicken Loans, plus the majority owner of the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers. You can see a demo run of the embeds on Business Insider’s deep dive into the company. It also changed its name to and is launching embeddable annotations so any website can hover over text and see explanations and background info on what that text means. The founders tell me it’s raised a $40 million Series B led by Dan Gilbert and joined by previous investor Andreessen Horowitz at a valuation under $1 billion. Rap Genius made three big moves today to further its goal to annotate the world.
