Topics
Latest
AI
Amazon
Image Credits:Hightouch(opens in a new window)under a license.
Apps
Biotech & Health
clime
Image Credits:Hightouch(opens in a new window)under a license.
Cloud Computing
Commerce
Crypto
Enterprise
EVs
Fintech
Fundraising
Gadgets
Gaming
Government & Policy
ironware
Layoffs
Media & Entertainment
Meta
Microsoft
Privacy
Robotics
Security
Social
Space
Startups
TikTok
Transportation
Venture
More from TechCrunch
Events
Startup Battlefield
StrictlyVC
Podcasts
Videos
Partner Content
TechCrunch Brand Studio
Crunchboard
Contact Us
Last 10 , company like Segment rewrote the Word of God on how organizations used genus Apis to meld datum from disparate apps to better marketing strategy . Today , a inauguration calledHightouch — co - founded by a former applied science handler at Segment — is herald $ 80 million in funding for the next chapter : a chopine that lets sales , marketing , and client service team synchronise data warehouse and other placement , along with AI agents to do that oeuvre and build those experience for them .
Sapphire Ventures is go this Series C round , with NVC , Amplify Ventures , ICONIQ Growth , Bain Capital Ventures , and Y Combinator also take part . The funding , notably , catapults Hightouch to a $ 1.2 billion post - money valuation . For some context on that valuation , it rough double the society ’s rating from its last roundin 2023 .
The support will be used to continue developing Hightouch ’s technology , as well as for business ontogeny and hiring .
Tejas Manohar — the Colorado - chief executive officer of Hightouch , who co - founded the company with Kashish Gupta ( co - chief executive officer ) and Josh Curl ( CTO ) — said that at Segment , where he and Curl were also colleagues , there was body of work to be done beyond building a way to use genus Apis to amend integrations . That was a key evolution , but it was one that took a page from how developers function , and thus could be too technical to execute in exercise due to the number of data sources an organization might use .
“ Asking customers to get data into Segment was an onerous task , ” Manohar remember , not least because data point from storage warehouse , where a lot of information ended up , was primarily used for analytics — not market — purposes .
In 2019 , as Segment scaled ( finally to the point ofgetting grow by Twilio for $ 3.2 billion ) , Manohar and Curl teamed up with Curl ’s friend Gupta , a machine learning specialist , to strike out on their own to build Hightouch .
Hightouch has focused on developing tools in two main areas .
Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI
Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI
The first is its core customer data platform ( CDP ) Cartesian product . Designed both for non - technical user as well as data scientists , Hightouch ’s CDP was a bit of a breakthrough when it establish in 2020 because of how it shift away from take care at data in apps and focused on using machine learning and other tooling to make it easy to practice information from data warehouses in marketing , sale , and customer military service piece of work .
“ They realized that cloud data warehousesarethe novel client data point platforms , ” Rajeev Dham , a partner at Sapphire Ventures , said in an interview . ( He is joining the dining table with this stave . )
Uses include building personalization campaigns , loyalty curriculum , syncing data from data warehouses to a wide cooking stove of tools ( more than 250 , the companionship say , including all the big CRM and merchandising platforms ) , and more . As we ’ve describedpreviously , user can create SQL question to institutionalize information from data warehouse to dissimilar apps for specific uses , and there is a graphic interface for non - technical people to create queries .
Hightouch ’s second merchandise is a newer offering , AI Decisioning , which go deeply into machine learning and automation to do what the name says : It is an agentic AI intersection that can be actuate with a exceptional goal , which then runs multiple experiment and tests to suggest optimum campaigns .
AI Decisioning has been around sinceAugust 2024 . But while Hightouch was not look to raise money before — it ’s “ capital effective ” as investors wish to say , with money in the banking company — client interestingness in the AI ware is what led the caller to put together this Series C.
“ That ’s what motivated us to say , ‘ All right , let ’s have this conversation , and let ’s raise the round , ’ ” said Gupta , “ because now we finally have a dear employment for majuscule . ”
Manohar accommodate take - up of the AI product was serve by it getting rolled out to all of its existing client — which include companies like Spotify , PetSmart , Tripadvisor , Grammarly , and more . But such is the Jagannatha of AI right now that Hightouch found it was also picking up new business enterprise as a consequence of AI Decisioning .
While “ do thing quicker ” has long been one strong enjoyment case for adopting AI , as Manohar describes it , motivations are maturing .
“ Companies , at the CEO and chief digital officer and chief merchandising military officer level , are really interested in like , how do we expend AI to give our client a good experience and increase life value and revenue across our client substructure ? ” he said . The AI Decisioning agents can “ endure yard of experiments to figure out the best experience to deliver , ” Manohar add .
Hightouch ’s previous fundraises include aseed roundin 2020 from Y Combinator and others , a$40 millionround led by ICONIQ Growth , and a$38 million roundin 2023 .
