Series D Round Co-Led by Akkadian Ventures and Mubadala Capital; Ankit Bhatia joins as SVP of Engineering
People.ai, the premiere revenue operations and intelligence platform, today announced $100 million in Series D funding at a $1.1 billion post-money valuation, co-led by Mike Dinsdale of Akkadian Ventures and Abdulla AlBanna of Mubadala Capital, with participation from existing investors including ICONIQ Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The capital will support People.ai’s continued growth through investments in the company’s SmartData platform and its expansion into new industry segments and geographies.
People.ai’s unique SmartData Foundation platform, patented Artificial Intelligence (AI), SmartMatch™, and PeopleGraph® identity graph technologies help customers such as AppDynamics, DataRobot, Ivanti, Okta, and Zoom increase the revenue generated by every sales representative, every year. The AI-driven platform has been awarded 49 patents and transforms business activity captured directly from email, calendar and conferencing systems into go-to-market insights that make revenue teams more productive.
Prior to the onset of COVID-19, Zoom capitalized on People.ai to increase rep bookings by 42% relative to those teams that were not using the solution. This direct impact on customers’ top line has helped propel People.ai to triple-digit revenue growth and a leadership position in revenue operations and intelligence solutions. Since its founding in 2016, People.ai has trained its AI on $239 billion in closed/won enterprise deals and 1.1 billion unique sales activities with 14 billion AI insights extracted from those activities.
Gartner® predicts, “by 2025, 75% of the highest growth companies in the world will deploy a revenue operations model.1” Further,Gartner® predicts, “by 2024, 80% of large enterprises worldwide will have adopted sales software, up from 70% in 2018.2
- Over the past year, People.ai has accelerated its momentum:
- 260% increased customer growth
- Added Robin Matlock, former VMWare CMO, to Board of Directors
- Was awarded 49 patents with 40+ more pending
- Acquired Closeplan, the recognized leader by G2, for Customer Revenue Optimization
- Acquired Hero Research, and relaunched Hero.app as PeopleGlass™ to turbo-charge the sales team’s productivity when updating and editing CRM data. PeopleGlass isavailable for free to sales, customer success, sales engineering, and operations users
“I’ve had the privilege to serve as CFO at companies such as DoorDash, DocuSign, and Gusto. Those experiences helped me recognize the hallmarks of companies that fundamentally change the way businesses operate,” said Mike Dinsdale, managing director at Akkadian Ventures. “I instantly recognized the game-changing nature of People.ai and I’m looking forward to watching them build the next generation of go-to-market growth engine for the enterprise.”
“On rare occasions, we come across a company that will forever change how we work,” said Abdulla AlBanna of Mubadala Capital’s US venture business. “People.ai stands above the competition in its ability to transform people’s processes across an entire organization. By applying breakthrough AI technology to vast data sets, People.ai is significantly improving efficiencies of enterprise processes, increasing productivity and performance across workflows. We’re proud to co-lead this investment in People.ai as they deliver on a vision to fundamentally change the next era of innovation in B2B software.”
The new funding round coincides with the appointment of Ankit Bhatia as SVP of Engineering. Bhatia will lead People.ai’s next phase of innovation and join the executive leadership team, reporting directly to People.ai Founder and CEO Oleg Rogynskyy. Bhatia brings over two decades of B2B enterprise software engineering experience at Microsoft, Tableau, and Looker, where his product-led growth (PLG) initiatives accelerated customer adoption.
“B2B sales is changing, as companies increasingly look to operationalize all revenue-impacting functions and drive customer engagements based on data-driven insights instead of hunches and instinct,” said Rogynskyy. “Our AI technology harnesses business activity like email, calendar, and video conferencing data, allowing sales managers to become data-driven coaches, and reps to spend more time on the right sales pursuits. This new funding will ensure that People.ai continues to lead the industry with the world’s best account and opportunity management functionality.”
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