SILICON SLOPES, UT--(Marketwired - Jan 18, 2017) - Today InsideSales.com , the world's leading AI-powered predictive sales acceleration platform, announced the close of a $50 million growth equity round, representing the first significant investment in AI for business in 2017.
The round is led by returning investor Polaris Partners with support from Microsoft, also a returning investor. New investors include QuestMark Partners and the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund. Existing venture investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, Hummer Winblad, U.S. Venture Partners, Epic Ventures, and Zetta Venture Partners also participated. The round brings the company's total venture capital funding to over $250 million.
"With this financing, we further cement our leadership position in a sector where customers are now expecting AI to produce real results," said Dave Elkington, CEO, InsideSales. "As an early leader offering AI-fueled tools in the workplace, we're excited to use this new investment to bring InsideSales' technology to new geographies, new platforms and to foster smart growth for companies of all sizes."
This funding comes at a time of unprecedented momentum for the company, following the launch of its new AI-fueled Playbooks platform . Worldwide, AI is at a tipping point: According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) , revenues from the technology are projected to grow from just under $8 billion in 2013 to more than $47 billion by 2020.
"Having witnessed InsideSales' consistently impressive growth over the past few years, we're excited to lead this round," said Dave Barrett, managing partner at Polaris Partners. "The diverse range of investors joining us - from growth equity to corporate strategic development to sovereign funds - is representative of the broad confidence we all share in the strategy and trajectory of InsideSales as a company and the power to use AI to shape the way we all do business."
In an increasingly global marketplace, InsideSales identified Ireland as an optimal jumping off point for its next strategic expansion into Europe and beyond. This will position its Playbooks platform to gain a strong foothold in the European market, helping sales teams to leverage AI in the workplace, thereby empowering global enterprise customers to sell better, sell faster, and sell more.
"We are pleased to welcome InsideSales into Ireland's flourishing technology community," said Eugene O'Callaghan, Director of the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund. "This investment is well aligned with the ISIF's mandate to invest on a commercial basis in a manner designed to support economic activity and employment in Ireland. The key benefits to the Irish economy will be the targeted creation of more than 120 high quality jobs in the next 3 years, in addition to the collaboration between InsideSales and the Insight Centre fostering growth in this important specialist sector."
InsideSales' previous funding round, a strategic investment led by Salesforce Ventures with participation from Microsoft, marked Microsoft's first investment in the company. In addition to investing, Microsoft has also partnered with InsideSales on CRM and cloud technology integration. As a next step in the partnership, InsideSales plans to create versions of Playbooks that run on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform and integrate with Microsoft Azure cloud services.
"As a close partner, it's exciting to imagine the potential of InsideSales paired with Microsoft technology," said Jujhar Singh, corporate vice president of Microsoft Dynamics 365. "With even greater focus on AI in our day-to-day lives, we're excited to help InsideSales deliver its intelligent solutions to more workplaces through the Dynamics 365 platform."
For more information about InsideSales.com, please visit www.insidesales.com .
About InsideSales.com InsideSales.com offers the industry's leading sales acceleration platform built on Neuralytics, a predictive and prescriptive self-learning engine that drives revenue growth by delivering an optimized experience for both salesperson and buyer. The platform fuels sales rep performance and provides buyer personalization with breakthrough innovations in predictive sales communications, engagement tracking, forecasting and rep motivation. InsideSales.com has received numerous accolades for its technology, including being named to the CNBC Disruptor 50 and Forbes Cloud 100 lists, and earning recognition as one of the fastest growing companies, according to Inc. InsideSales.com enterprise customers include ADP, Microsoft and Groupon.
Media Contact Margaret Farrell insidesales@highwirepr.com (415) 962-4174
