By Eva Mathews
(Reuters) – Cloud services firm Talkdesk Inc said on Thursday it raised $230 million in fresh funding, pushing its valuation to more than $10 billion, at a time of greater demand for software-as-a-service (SaaS) to support remote work.
The company also named Sydney Carey as its first chief financial officer, picking the former finance head of Sumo Logic who helped steer the cloud-based data analytics firm through its initial public offering (IPO) last year.
“Right now we’re focused on executing our day-to-day. We don’t have specific plans to execute an IPO,” Carey told Reuters when asked about possible going-public plans, adding it could be an option “down the road.”
Investors are doubling down on tech startups that offer cloud-based services as demand accelerated during the pandemic. Businesses and governments are signing up for a mix of cloud providers to forgo costly investments to run in-house infrastructure.
San Francisco–based Talkdesk now enters the “decacorn” club, a rapidly growing group of startups whose valuation exceeds $10 billion.
The company develops cloud-based software to help businesses manage call centers and other customer services and caters to companies such as IBM, South American e-commerce giant Mercadolibre and online hotel booking portal Trivago.
Last month, Zoom Communications Inc struck its largest deal to buy Talkdesk’s competitor Five9 for about $15 billion.
The latest funding propped Talkdesk’s valuation to more than three times its investment round in July last year, when it was valued at $3 billion.
Talkdesk, which has raised $498 million in total, plans to use the new capital to expand its international operations further.
The latest investment came from new investors Whale Rock Capital Management, TI Platform Management, Alpha Square Group and from existing investors Amity Ventures, Franklin Templeton and Top Tier Capital among others.
(Reporting by Eva Mathews in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)
