The brand of the spreadsheet tool Microsoft Excel is proven at the show of a smartphone.
Thomas Trutschel | Photothek | Getty Pictures
French trade making plans tool startup Pigment has raised $88 million in a investment spherical led by way of ICONIQ, the personal funding fund that manages the cash of tech billionaires akin to Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey.
Pigment is best possible recognized for its trade making plans and forecasting platform that is designed to be extra user-friendly than Microsoft’s spreadsheet tool Excel.
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The corporate, co-founded and helmed by way of twin CEOs Eleonore Crespo and Romain Niccoli, informed CNBC it deliberate to make use of the investment to amplify its achieve within the U.S. and synthetic intelligence.
Mission capital companies Felix Capital, Meritech, IVP, and FirstMark additionally participated within the investment spherical.
Pigment counts the likes of Klarna, Miro and Tommy Hilfiger proprietor PVH as its shoppers.
The corporate’s gear are basically utilized by finance groups to devise and make monetary and trade selections. In addition to Microsoft, Pigment additionally perspectives endeavor tool gear from giants like Google, SAP and Oracle as competitors.
Crespo stated that, in 2022, Pigment grew its revenues by way of 600% and its general consumer base greater tenfold — and insisted it was once neatly situated to compete with behemoth incumbent Microsoft.
“We now not most effective have customers within the finance workforce however out of doors of finance, and that’s the reason tremendous attention-grabbing for buyers to listen to that we don’t seem to be a finance platform however a trade database that may serve any trade chief in the market from HR to gross sales to advertising, to R&D [research and development],” she stated.
“We’re right here to promote [to] any trade chief. And now not most effective that, however they have got heard from their portfolio corporations that we controlled to serve probably the most forward-looking corporations in the market.”
Pigment additionally plans to make use of the newest inflow of cash to spend money on the improvement of AI merchandise.
It presented a brand new provider referred to as Pigment AI closing month, at the heels of heightened buzz surrounding AI and merchandise like ChatGPT, which shall we shoppers question knowledge, establish patterns and automate research and reporting.
Crespo stated there are not any plans to extend headcount considerably and Pigment was once as an alternative searching to develop in a extra sustainable method, given the drive from buyers on companies to reach profitability in choose of breakneck expansion.