The emblem of the spreadsheet software program Microsoft Excel is proven on the show of a smartphone.
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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 akin to Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey.
Pigment is finest recognized for its enterprise planning and forecasting platform that is designed to be extra user-friendly than Microsoft’s spreadsheet software program Excel.
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The corporate, co-founded and helmed by twin CEOs Eleonore Crespo and Romain Niccoli, advised 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 prospects.
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 consumer base elevated tenfold — and insisted it was effectively positioned to compete with behemoth incumbent Microsoft.
“We not solely have customers within the finance staff however outdoors of finance, and that is tremendous attention-grabbing 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 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 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 put money into the event of AI merchandise.
It launched a brand new service referred to as Pigment AI final month, on the heels of heightened buzz surrounding AI and merchandise like ChatGPT, which lets purchasers question information, determine patterns and automate evaluation and reporting.
Crespo mentioned there are not any plans to extend headcount considerably and Pigment was as an alternative seeking to develop in a extra sustainable method, given the strain from buyers on companies to attain profitability in favor of breakneck development.
