Ukrainian startup People.ai has attracted $60 million to foster its expansion, the company announced on May 21.
Several companies participated in this round of investment: venture firms Iconiq Capital, Andreessen Horowitz (a Facebook and Twitter stakeholder), Lightspeed Venture Partners, GGV Capital, and Y Combinator. They have reportedly valued the Ukrainian startup at $500 million.
With the money, the company plans to hire more people and, particularly, to grow its Kyiv-based office from 30 staffers to 100, according to Ukrainian tech publication AIN.ua. Today, the company employs about 150 people across three offices — in Kyiv, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
People.ai develops artificial intelligence that helps sales specialists to work with clients. The program gathers information from databases to which its users grant it access and then forms business intelligence needed to sell or market a product or recruit people. The startup’s revenues have been growing by five digits year-over-year while the company works with San Francisco-based startups like Lyft, Zoom, and MemSQL.
According to People.ai founder and CEO Oleg Rogynskyy, this investment is “a critical milestone” for the startup.
“Today, we’re taking People.ai to the next level of artificial intelligence that provides customer-facing teams with a simple, personalized set of actions based on current, historical, and industry data that will help accelerate revenue,” Rogynskyy said.
The company also used this investment round to announce the roll-out of its new tool The Wire, a feed of insights that salespeople can access to find potential clients, pick up tips on how to approach them and, ultimately, sell to them. “When you use The Wire, you’ll have your most productive day at work, every day,” Rogynskyy said.
As a result of the investment round, Will Griffith, managing partner at Iconiq, will join the People.ai board of directors.
“We’re thrilled to partner with People.ai, as they execute their vision to unleash the potential of artificial intelligence to drive enterprise revenue. People.ai is well positioned in a highly strategic enterprise market, leveraging automation and AI to fundamentally change the way people work,” Griffith said.
Ukrainian Rogynskyy founded People.ai in 2016 and has managed to attract over $100 million in investment over the years. In October 2018, the company raised its previous round of investment: $30 million.
The Kyiv Post’s technology coverage is sponsored by Ciklum and NIX Solutions. The content is independent of the donors.
