News in Brief:

• The data analysis platform ThoughtSpot just raised $248 million from a fundraiser Series E round.
• The company stands at the valuation of nearly $2 billion.
• The list of investors included Silver Lake Waterman, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sapphire Ventures, etc.
• The company intends to use the capital raised for expanding the platform’s capabilities.

ThoughtSpot, a business intelligence platform launched by a group of ex-Googlers, has raised a hefty amount of $240 million in a Series E round. The round has put the valuation at $1.95 billion.  

Some of the major collaborators of this fundraising round include ThoughtSpot’s existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sapphire Ventures, Geodesic Capital, and a new player Silver Lake Waterman― Silver Lake late-stage growth capital fund. ThoughtSpot bagged $554 million from overall fundraising rounds.

The purpose of the ThoughtSpot company is to speed up the data analysis process. They intend to do so by responding to the natural language questions without the need of understanding the formulation of a SQL query. 

Meaning, when a person inserts the questions into the field, ThoughtSpot immediately translates that query into SQL. After this, it represents a chart with the data related to that question, and all so instantly or at least it was in the demo. 

Additionally, it uses the emerging technology Artificial Intelligence to know the intent of the query. It enables AI to come up with the most accurate answer. 

The CEO of the company, Sudheesh Nair remarked that AI is the foundation of this product. He further explained that if you are trying to get an answer to a particular question, say “What is the profit margin of red shoes in Portland?”, then there will not be multiple responses. You will get a single answer; this is where AI displays its magic.

In his exact words― “The bar on delivering that kind of answer is very high and because of that, understanding intent is critical. We use AI for that. You could ask, ‘How did we do with red shoes in Portland?’ I could ask, ‘What is the profit margin of red shoes in Portland?’ The system needs to know that we both are asking the same question. So there’s a lot of AI that goes behind it to understand the intent,”

ThoughtSpot also connects with a variety of internal systems such as HR, CRM, and ERP, in order to deliver answers to the queries in the best possible way. From what we see, it’s working pretty great, in fact, the company has around 250 large-organization customers, making it reach the run rate of close to $100 million.

Sudheesh Nair stated that the company already had $100 million, however, he saw an opportunity to draw more investments. He surmised that the capital markets will tighten a bit next year, so he decided to hit hard when the iron was still hot. He also said that the money raised from the Series E round would provide him the flexibility to move forward.  

He plans on using the capital raised in the acquisition of other companies to add more personnel and fill the missing pieces. The money will also make the expansion of the platform’s capabilities possible. 

He additionally commented about the company going public― “With these kind of resources behind us, it actually opens up an opportunity for us to do any sort of IPO that we want. I do think that a company like this will benefit from going public because Global 2000 kind of customers, where we have our most of our business, appreciate the transparency and the stability represented by public companies,”.

All in all, ThoughtSpot has a bright future ahead with hefty capital amounts to back their growth and development. 

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