The brand of the spreadsheet software program Microsoft Excel is proven on the show of a smartphone.
Thomas Trutschel | Photothek | Getty Pictures
French enterprise planning software program startup Pigment has raised $88 million in a funding spherical led by ICONIQ, the personal funding fund that manages the cash of tech billionaires equivalent to Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey.
Pigment is finest 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 increase its attain within the U.S. and synthetic intelligence.
Enterprise capital companies 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 choices. 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 whole person base elevated tenfold — and insisted it was effectively positioned to compete with behemoth incumbent Microsoft.
“We not solely have customers within the finance crew however exterior of finance, and that is tremendous fascinating for buyers 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, 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 corporations that we managed to serve essentially the most forward-looking corporations on the market.”
Pigment additionally plans to make use of the most recent inflow of cash to spend money on 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 purchasers question knowledge, determine patterns and automate evaluation and reporting.
Crespo mentioned there are not any plans to extend headcount considerably and Pigment was as a substitute seeking to develop in a extra sustainable manner, given the stress from buyers on companies to attain profitability in favor of breakneck development.