Investissement Québec (IQ) has injected $1.9 million into AmpMe, a Montreal application accused of being a scam.
Founded in 2015 by Martin-Luc Archambault, then a star of the show In the eye of the dragon, AmpMe lets you sync music across multiple devices.
Announced by Anglade
It was the then Minister of the Economy, Dominique Anglade, who announced the investment in AmpMe in May 2016.
“In Quebec, we are fortunate to be able to count on visionary and prolific entrepreneurs, whose projects must be supported at all costs,” she said in a press release.
“I wanted to have a major Quebec institutional investor around the table and Investissement Québec was able to meet our conditions within the tight deadlines that were required. The team delivered the promised goods in exactly two months! for his part, rejoiced Mr. Archambault.
“We hold a passive stake in the company,” said this week at the Newspaper an IQ spokeswoman, Catherine Salvail.
Fake comments
In a series of Twitter messages published on January 10, American entrepreneur Kosta Eleftheriou, who presents himself as a “professional reviewer” of the Apple App Store, argued that the Quebec company was buying false positive comments to encourage users to subscribe to AmpMe.
The subscription, which then cost US$9.99 a week, is difficult to cancel, Eleftheriou said. In response, AmpMe has just reduced the price to US$4.99 per week.
According to Kosta Eleftheriou, AmpMe has collected over US$13 million in subscription fees since 2018.
Recall that in 2017, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada concluded that another software launched by Martin-Luc Archambault, Wajam, had violated numerous provisions of the Privacy Act.