The brand of the spreadsheet software program Microsoft Excel is proven on the show of a smartphone.
Thomas Trutschel | Photothek | Getty Photographs
French enterprise planning software program startup Pigment has raised $88 million in a funding spherical led by ICONIQ, the non-public funding fund that manages the cash of tech billionaires akin to Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey.
Pigment is greatest identified for its enterprise planning and forecasting platform that is designed to be extra user-friendly than Microsoft’s spreadsheet software program Excel.
The corporate, co-founded and helmed by twin CEOs Eleonore Crespo and Romain Niccoli, instructed CNBC it deliberate to make use of the funding to develop its attain within the U.S. and synthetic intelligence.
Enterprise capital corporations Felix Capital, Meritech, IVP, and FirstMark additionally participated within the funding spherical.
Pigment counts the likes of Klarna, Miro and Tommy Hilfiger proprietor PVH as its clients.
The corporate’s instruments are primarily utilized by finance groups to plan and make monetary and enterprise selections. In addition to Microsoft, Pigment additionally views enterprise software program instruments from giants like Google, SAP and Oracle as rivals.
Crespo mentioned that, in 2022, Pigment grew its revenues by 600% and its complete person base elevated tenfold — and insisted it was nicely positioned to compete with behemoth incumbent Microsoft.
“We not solely have customers within the finance workforce however outdoors of finance, and that is tremendous attention-grabbing for traders to listen to that we aren’t a finance platform however a enterprise database that may serve any enterprise chief on the market from HR to gross sales to advertising and marketing, to R&D [research and development],” she mentioned.
“We’re right here to promote [to] any enterprise chief. And never solely that, however they’ve heard from their portfolio firms that we managed to serve probably the most forward-looking firms on the market.”
Pigment additionally plans to make use of the most recent inflow of cash to put money into the event of AI merchandise.
It launched a brand new service known as Pigment AI final month, on the heels of heightened buzz surrounding AI and merchandise like ChatGPT, which lets shoppers question information, establish patterns and automate evaluation and reporting.
Crespo mentioned there aren’t any plans to extend headcount considerably and Pigment was as an alternative seeking to develop in a extra sustainable method, given the stress from traders on companies to attain profitability in favor of breakneck progress.