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Discussion desk, a cloud-based contact center software provider, announced $ 230 million in new Series D funding that more than triples the company’s valuation to $ 10 billion, the Talkdesk CEO confirmed , Tiago Paiva, at TechCrunch.
New investors Whale Rock Capital Management, TI Platform Management and Alpha Square Group joined this round and were joined by existing investors Amity Ventures, Franklin Templeton, Top Tier Capital Partners, Viking Global Investors and Willoughby Capital.
Talkdesk uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve customer service for midsize and large businesses. It has more than 1,800 corporate clients, including IBM, Acxiom, Trivago and Fujitsu.
“The global pandemic has played an important role in the way customers interact and the way we interact with our customers, all working from home,†said Paiva. “When you think about ordering things online, call, chat and email interactions have become more important, and contact centers have become essential in every business. “
San Francisco-based Talkdesk now has total funding of $ 498 million since its inception in 2011. It was a competitor of Startup Battlefield to TechCrunch Disrupt NY in 2012. The new funding follows a $ 143 million Series C raised last July which earned it a valuation of $ 3 billion. Prior to that, Talkdesk grossed $ 100 million in 2018.
The 2020 cycle was expected to support the growth and expansion of the business to nearly 2,000 employees, Paiva said. For Series D, there was a lot of interest from investors, including a lot of inbound interest, he said.
“We weren’t looking for new funds and ended last year with more money in the bank than we raised in the last round, but the investors were great and wanted it to work,†Paiva said.
Half of Talkdesk’s staff work in products and engineering, an area in which it intends to double with the new funding as well as increase headcount to support customers. The company also plans to expand in areas where it already has a presence: Latin America, Europe, Asia and Australia.
This year, the company unveiled new features, including Talkdesk Workspace, a customizable interface for contact center teams, and Talkdesk Builder, a set of tools for workspace customization, routing, reporting and reporting. integrations. It has also launched contact center tools designed specifically for financial services and healthcare organizations and what it bills as “the first human tool in the industry loop for contact centers and continues to lower the barrier. to the adoption of artificial intelligence solutions “.
In addition to funding, Talkdesk appointed its first CFO, Sydney Carey, giving the company a management team made up of 50 percent women, Paiva said. Carey has a background in SaaS and joins the company after working at Sumo Logic, where she led the organization on an initial public offering in 2020.
“We were recruiting our leadership team over the past two years and were looking for a CFO, but without a specific timeline, who was looking for the right fit,†Paiva added. “Sydney was the person we wanted to hire.
While Paiva has not hinted at any upcoming IPO plans, TI Platform Management co-founders Trang Nguyen and Alex Bangash have been following Paiva since he started the company and said they expected the company to move in this direction in the future.
“Talkdesk is an example of what can happen when a strong team comes together behind a winning idea,†they said in a written statement. “Today, Talkdesk has become almost ubiquitous as a SaaS product with adoption across a wide range of industries and integrations with the most popular enterprise cloud platforms including Salesforce, Zendesk and Slack. “
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