Founded in 2016 by Oleg Rogynskyy and graduated from S16 batch of Y Combinator, one of our portfolio startups, People.ai has raised $100M in Series D at $1.1B post-money valuation.
The funding round was co-led by Abdulla AlBanna, Partner at Mubadala Capital which is the venture capital arm of Abu Dhabi based investment firm, Mubadala and Mike Dinsdale, Partner at Akkadian Ventures, a San Francisco based venture capital in participation with ICONIQ Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
This new funding came after acquisition of Salesforce productivity app, Hero Research by People.ai which happened just three months ago. In Q4 2020, People.ai also acquired ClosePlan, a Salesforce app for revenue optimization. Let’s have a recap of People.ai financials:
- 2016 – Seed round
- 2017 – Series A ($7M)
- 2018 – Series B ($30M)
- 2019 – Series C ($60M)
- 2021 – Now ($100M)
Including Series D funds, the total funding amount of People.ai now has raised to $200M according to Crunchbase.
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.
“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.”
Please read full story at People.ai Newsroom.