Glean Technologies Inc., the developer of a conversational search platform for enterprises, said today it has raised more than $260 million in a Series E funding round that values the company at $4.6 billion.
The funding comes less than seven months after the company raised more than $200 million in a late-stage round that valued it at $2.2 billion. Glean is now sitting on more than $550 million in cash, has tripled its annual recurring revenue rate in the past 12 months and employs more than 500 people globally, according to Chief Executive Arvind Jain.
Glean’s generative artificial intelligence platform differs from consumer-oriented services like OpenAI LLC’s ChatGPT by including features that are unique to business scenarios. That includes the ability to accept multi-step prompts that automate complex workflows and to access popular enterprise applications via more than 100 connectors.
The platform also incorporates access permissions in search results, delivering only information the employee is entitled to see. It also factors in job descriptions and projects to fine-tune results to the user’s interests.
The company has recently integrated its technology with customer service applications from Zendesk Inc. and Salesforce Inc. to enable customer support representatives to more quickly track down information and generate follow-up communications to customers.
Jain said the company has rapidly amassed a list of blue-chip technology customers that include Reddit Inc., Instacart Inc., Pinterest Inc., Databricks Inc., BILL Holdings Inc. and Samsara Inc. as well as large but unnamed customers in telecommunications, banking, retail, semiconductors, electronics and manufacturing. He said Glean Assistant users perform about five queries per day, which is similar to the average number of daily web searches they conduct. The 40% of monthly active users who consult Glean daily is more than double the 10% to 20% rate that is typical for enterprise software.
Coincident with the funding, Glean announced a prompt builder that enables users to create, test, embellish and save natural-language multi-step prompts to automate complex tasks and workflows and to share them in a library that can be accessed an organization.
The round was co-led by Altimeter Capital Management LP and DST Global V, L.P. with participation from new investors Craft Ventures LLC, Sapphire Ventures LLC, and SB Investment Advisers (UK) Ltd.’s SoftBank Vision Fund 2. Existing investors to participate in the round include Coatue Management LLC, General Catalyst Partners LLC, Iconiq Capital LLC, Institutional Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins LLC, Lightspeed Management Company LLC, and Sequoia Capital Operations LLC.