In a move reflecting the growing importance of AI-driven market intelligence, AlphaSense, a leader in this space, announced a $150 million Series E fundraise. This round was led by Mary Meeker's BOND Capital, marking the startup's latest stride in its upward trajectory.
The funding follows a notable $100 million Series D extension investment just months ago, spearheaded by Alphabet’s CapitalG. This boost in financial backing increases AlphaSense’s valuation to a lofty $2.5 billion and further its cements its position in the market intelligence sector.
AlphaSense has been the vanguard of the AI-powered market intelligence revolution. Their advanced search, summarization, and chat features, driven by AI, have been instrumental for businesses seeking insights from both internal and external sources. The latest capital will augment AlphaSense’s enterprise solutions, targeting private clouds of businesses.
However, the launch of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools threatens to automate many basic market intelligence tasks. This could undercut demand for services from AlphaSense and competitors like SimilarWeb, GLG, and Gartner.
In response, AlphaSense plans to double down on AI capabilities. The company will use the new funding to expand its enterprise solutions and proprietary AI models. New product offerings will focus on summarization, search, and conversational chat bots - areas where AlphaSense believes it still maintains an edge over publicly available AI.
Jack Kokko, CEO and Founder of AlphaSense, highlighted their dedication to innovation. "We aim to lead the generative AI revolution, transforming how enterprises search for information. This fresh capital paves the way for strategic advancements to meet our goal," Kokko stated.
What sets AlphaSense apart is its vast trove of over 10,000 private and public information sources, spanning research published by major firms, government data, and insights from competitors. The company has focused intently on aggregating financial insights, acquiring platforms like Stream and Sentieo that compile expert interviews and data for investment managers.
BOND's General Partner, Jay Simons, was effusive about the investment. “AlphaSense stands out as an emerging iconic company that's reshaping the business landscape. Their unparalleled ability to furnish businesses with actionable insights positions them as a clear industry frontrunner.”
Additionally, BAM Elevate, a part of Balyasny Asset Management, L.P. (BAM), a longtime AlphaSense client since 2015, has become a new investor. “AlphaSense's capabilities have immensely improved our investment processes, giving us more rapid and dependable insights. We're betting big on their growth trajectory,” noted Norman Chen, Partner at BAM Elevate.
Over the past ten years, AlphaSense has been at the forefront, evolving the research methodologies for business and financial professionals. Their consistent innovations in AI and NLP technology have seen them gather vast amounts of data, refining their language models, and accumulating a rich repository of reliable business content.
AlphaSense's journey has been about making data-driven decisions with confidence and alacrity. Jack Kokko reiterated the company’s steadfast mission, "As market intelligence becomes an ever more pivotal tool in business decision-making, our goal remains to empower professionals with the best tools.”
With this new capital in tow, AlphaSense plans to amplify its vast reservoir of searchable business content, undertake strategic acquisitions, and refine its platform's capabilities. In the words of Kokko, "We're scripting the next chapter of market intelligence, and we're eager to keep revolutionizing the enterprise search experience."