People.ai

People.ai began as a revenue intelligence platform but has widened its product to cover marketing and sales. Its artificial intelligence-based (AI-based) sales and marketing solutions offer sales playbooks and recommendations, automated customer relationship management (CRM), and pipeline visibility. In May 2019, the company launched “The Wire” which offers a real-time feed of recommended actions based on data collected from sales activity on emails, calendars and CRM systems.The platform is well integrated counting over 90 application programming interface (API) integrations with video conferencing and collaboration tools such as Zoom, GSuite, and Slack.

In September 2022, the firm launched new features 1) Engagement Dashboards which contain visualisations that provide insight on buyer/seller engagement and 2) Account Planning with a native Salesforce integration which allows sales teams to operationalize account plans and provide customer insights. In May 2023, the firm launched AccountGPT, an AI-driven enhancement to its account planning application that leverages generative AI and large language models (LLMs) to automate sections of account plans, including market research, by extracting data from publicly available sources such as company websites and earnings reports. 

Further, the company claimed to have around 70 patents combined (secured and in progress) for its AI-based intelligent matching of customer data and profiles. The platform claimed its AI system has been trained on 1.1 billion sales activities and over USD 239 billion in closed deals. The company planned to deploy its platform outside of the sales realm and into verticals such as real estate, financial services, and recruitment, which already account for a small share of use cases.

In October 2020, the company acquired ClosePlan, a sales intelligence app, to further strengthen its AI sales solution. ClosePlan offers sales playbooks, deal scoring, and account planning solutions.

Key customers and partnerships

In July 2022, the company partnered with integrated solution provider Oracle, to use AI-powered sales automation tool "Oracle Fusion Sales" to support its sales process.

Funding and financials

People.ai raised USD 100 million in a Series D funding round at a post-money valuation of USD 1.1 billion in August 2021. The round was co-led by new investors Akkadian Ventures and Mubadala Capital. The fresh funds are expected to be allocated to product development through investments in its SmartData platform, and to expand into new industry segments and geographies. The company also revealed that its customer base grew 260% over the 12 months preceding the funding, likely leading to its unicorn valuation.