Arvind Jain, co-founder and CEO of Glean, makes a selfie with employees of the startup, which is based in Palo Alto, Calif.
Glean
Artificial intelligence startup Glean attracted tech firms Databricks and Workday into its latest investment round. The Silicon Valley company also reeled in money from Wall Street.
Glean, whose software sifts through corporate repositories to offer quick answers to staff’ questions, said Tuesday that it’s raised $200 million at a $2.2 billion valuation. Banking giant Citigroup joined the lineup of software firms and traditional enterprise firms Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed and Sequoia in getting a chunk of the fast-growing AI business.
“When persons are excited in regards to the potential of a technology relative to other things, persons are willing to pay a better valuation, because they’re excited in regards to the market potential,” Arvind Purushotham, head of Citi Ventures, told CNBC in an interview. “They think the general exit shall be even larger.”
Glean’s annualized revenue at the tip of January was $39 million, up from $10 million a 12 months earlier. Advancements in AI have allowed the corporate to enhance its product with large language models (LLMs) that may produce natural-sounding text in response to a couple of words of written input.
The 4-year-old company, which currently has 337 employees, desires to get greater quickly and will hit 700 staffers by the tip of the 12 months, in keeping with co-founder and CEO Arvind Jain.
Many organizations try to work out how much productivity can increase by utilizing generative AI tools such as the Copilot add-on for Microsoft 365 subscriptions. Popularity within the space has surged since OpenAI launched the free ChatGPT chatbot in late 2022, however the business-focused products could be pricey.
Jain declined to discuss the price of the service. He said it’s based on the number of individuals using the product every month. OpenAI doesn’t disclose pricing for ChatGPT’s enterprise tier either, however the team version costs $25 per person per 30 days.
Jain, a former Google distinguished engineer and co-founder of knowledge security startup Rubrik, said he sees OpenAI as a partner, because Glean draws on LLMs from OpenAI and other firms to operate an AI assistant to reply questions based on available data. The Copilot for Microsoft 365, which offers a chat tool, is a more direct competitor, Jain said.
In the mean time, Jain said he is not spending loads of energy attempting to increase the quantity of revenue the corporate derives from each individual engaging with the product.
“I’m far more focused on how will we get far more users on the platform,” he said.
Clients include Confluent, Databricks and Sony Electronics. A spokesperson said one client has greater than 100,000 users, and one other is within the midst of deploying Glean to over 100,000 of its employees.
While Glean initially targeted the tech industry, it’s now trying to expand in financial services, retail, manufacturing and other sectors, Jain said.
The tech team inside Citigroup’s Markets business segment, which offers cross-asset sales and trading to firms and governments, got here across Glean as it was in search of the power to look and summarize data, Purushotham said. The technology is applicable companywide, he added.
Citi hasn’t began paying for Glean, however the bank will do a pilot evaluation and might find yourself as a customer, Purushotham said.
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