MarTech News: Round-Up 28/10/21

This Week in Martech: Billie Raises $100M on a $640M Valuation. Pipefy Raises $75 million. Cheetah Digital to Merge with CM Group. Guild raises $2.7M. Wisely Bought by Olo. Twilio Launches Growth Automation Platform. Vonage Acquires Jumper.ai. Instacart Buys Caper AI. Contenstack Acquires CMS Division. Dialpad Acquires Koopid. Martech News Gif

 

Billie Raises $100M on a $640M Valuation

B2B buy-now-pay-later startup Billie has raised $100M in Series C. This new round brings the companies valuation to $640M - four times what its value was in July 2019. 

The round was led by Dawn Capital, with participation from Klarna, Creandum, Picus, GFC, Tencent, and Speedinvest. According to Pymnts.com, this is the biggest funding round in the B2B BNPL market. 

Pipefy Raises $75M

Pipefy, a "low-code" workflow management SaaS start-up has raised $75M in series C funding. The round was led by SoftBank Latin America fund, with a $50M contribution. This brings Pipefy's total raised to $138.7M since 2015. 

CEO and founder Alessio Alionço reported that:

“Our tools enable citizen developers. These are professionals who work but do not have IT training. With Pipefy, these citizen developers can share standardization. You can create your own forms to collect data and customize the workflow you understand as a practitioner without relying on IT to build your application. “

Cheetah Digital to Merge with Marketing Brand Collector CM Group

CM Group, a portfolio of martech companies focused on multichannel digital marketing, has merged with CDP and customer engagement vendor Cheetah Digital. 

The merger will expand and enhance both companies ability to deliver email, omnichannel, personalisation, and loyalty solutions. Post-merger, the company plans significant investments across the portfolio to bring new products to its base of customers. 

Guild Raises $2.7M

Ad-free, digital community and networking app and platform Guild has raised $2.7M in seed funding, from existing angel investors. The company aims to establish itself as an LinkedIn alternative, for those using WhatsApp for their business. 

This comes on top of the companies growth acceleration during the Pandemic, which has arisen from the increase in digital collaboration and networking - up 500% since the start of 2020.

Wisely Bought by Olo

Olo, a on-demand commerce platform, has announced it will acquire Wisely, a customer intelligence and engagement platform, for $187M. This is Olo's first acquisition as a public company. 

The transaction includes $77M in cash, and $110M in Olo's class A common stock. 

"As we look to the future of digital entirety for restaurants, tools that help brands harness customer data and turn it into applicable insights will be essential for them to better serve guests and manage the restaurant enterprise as a whole," stated Noah Glass, Olo's CEO and founder. 

Twilio Launches Growth Automation Platform

Twilio, a cloud communication platform, has announced the launch of its growth automation platform Twilio Engage. This will be the newest pillar in Twilio's customer engagement platform. 

Using Engage, B2C companies will now be able to better understand customers, personalised the entire customer journey, and harness rapid digital transformations. 

Vonage Acquires Jumper.ai

Vonage, a Cloud Communications company, has acquired conversational commerce start-up Jumper.ai, for an undisclosed sum. 

"By acquiring Jumper.ai, Vonage is taking the next step in ensuring our customers can build better connections and turn one-way notifications into real conversations. The new buyer’s journey is about making the most of every moment and every touchpoint. Customers need to feel seen, heard, and engaged on every channel and from any location," says Savinay Berry, EVP, Product & Engineering at Vonage. 

Instacart Buys Caper AI

Instacart has announced its acquisition of Caper AI, a start-up developing technologies to automate brick-and-mortar checkout experiences. The deal is said to be for approximately $350M in cash and stock. 

With this move, Instacart aims to help retailers unify the in-store and online shopping experience for customers. Plus, the acquisition is part of Instacart's expanding "B2B2C" retail technology strategy. 

Contentstack Acquires CMS Division

Contentstack, an agile content management system, has announced it is to acquire the CMS division of Raw Engineering, a digital solutions company providing digital transformation strategy and custom development services, 

This comes soon after Contentstack raised $57.5M in an oversubscribed Series B round. 

"With the addition of such a highly skilled team, we are truly challenging the status quo. No other headless or MACH-compliant CMS vendor has anywhere near the breadth and depth of Contentstack's combined CMS expertise," said Neha Sampat, founder and CEO of Contentstack. 

Dialpad Acquires Koopid

Dialpad, a AI-powered communication and collaboration company, has announced its acquisition of Koopis, an AI-driven platform for omnichannel customer experience, or CX. 

Koopid will integrate with Dialpad Voice Intelligence to optimise CX through digital engagement and empower brands to differentiate with personalised customer service. 

“The Age of the Customer has transitioned into The Experience Age where the customer, employee and end user experience is now the great differentiator. Experience is what matters most and it needs to be mobile-friendly and remote-work functional to meet customers on their terms, and meet people where they work,” said Craig Walker, CEO, Dialpad.

 

MarTech News Round-up – over and out.

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