Business Analytics Developer ThoughtSpot Scores $248M In Funding, Nears $2B Valuation
As the business intelligence software arena is hit with a wave of consolidation, ThoughtSpot’s new financing and market valuation puts the company among the business analysis software industry’s top vendors.
Big data software vendor ThoughtSpot has raised $248 million in a new round of funding giving the developer of search and AI-driven analytics software a valuation of $1.95 billion.
ThoughtSpot will use the new financing to expand its research and development operations, including hiring for its engineering and product development teams, and continue expanding its go-to-market teams in North America, EMEA and Asia-Pacific, the company said Wednesday.
The funding further elevates the visibility of ThoughtSpot in the crowded – and rapidly changing – big data arena. Salesforce recently completed its $15.7 billion acquisition of business analytics software vendor Tableau Software while Google Cloud is buying business intelligence software developer Looker for $2.6 billion.
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Sunnyvale, Calif.-based ThoughtSpot, founded in 2012, gained attention one year ago when it hired Nutanix president Sudheesh Nair to be the company’s new CEO.
“When I see the work our customers like Walmart, BT and Daimler are doing with ThoughtSpot to transform their critical functions like supply chain or customer service, I’m incredibly inspired, but I also realize how much unlocked potential remains when it comes to data-driven insights,” Nair said in a statement announcing the new funding.
The new Series E round brings ThoughtSpot’s total financing to $554 million, giving the company a market valuation of $1.95 billion. New investor Silver Lake Waterman, Silver Lake’s late-stage growth capital fund, was a new investor in the round, joined by existing backers Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sapphire Ventures and Geodesic Capital.
ThoughtSpot’s business intelligence and big data analytics platform uses search and artificial intelligence technology to analyze huge volumes of data and generate reports and dashboards. At the product’s core is the ThoughtSpot Falcon in-memory calculation engine, a massively parallel processing system that can perform analytical queries across billions of data records in seconds. The software also has a natural language interface that makes ThoughtSpot usable by a wider audience of information workers compared to traditional business analytics tools.
In the funding announcement ThoughtSpot said its sales grew 195 percent in the first half of its fiscal year and are approaching a $100 million annual run rate. The company also said its average sales deal value is $250,000. Customers include Walmart, Hulu, Daimler, 7Eleven, PetCo and Rolls Royce.
“Seven years ago, we started ThoughtSpot to help create a more fact-driven world, whether in the boardroom or on the front lines of enterprises, by making data and insights available instantly to everyone, regardless of their technical skills,” said Ajeet Singh, ThoughtSpot’s executive chairman and a co-founder of the company. “We’ve been fortunate enough to have some of the most visionary customers supporting our mission since our inception.”
In the last year ThoughtSpot has increased its employee headcount by more than 65 percent to nearly 500, the company said. That includes a number of top executives including Nair, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales Brian McCarthy, previously vice president of sales at AppDynamics, and Vice President of Channels and Alliances Toni Adams, previously the channel chief at Medallia and before that the channel chief at Qlik.
Since its last funding round in May 2018 the company has opened offices in Singapore, Tokyo, Dusseldorf and expanded its office in Bangalore, India.