News Analysis
A year after its $190 million Series D, Contentsquare has closed on $500 million in Series E financing, bringing the value of the company to $2.8 billion.
Leading the funding was SoftBank Vision Fund 2, joined by existing investors Eurazeo Growth, Bpifrance, KKR, Canaan Partners and Highland Europe. Funds and accounts managed by BlackRock Private Equity Partners also participated in the round. According to the company, the Series E brings Contentsquare’s total funding to $810 million since its formation in 2012.
As part of the investment, Michel Combes, president of SoftBank Group International, will join Contentsquare’s board of directors.
Contentsquare’s area of concentration is a cloud-based platform for businesses to enhance customer experiences by analyzing customer behavior. Using anonymous web, mobile and app interactions, it provides intelligent recommendations that endeavor to increase user conversion, revenue, engagement and growth.
According to company founder and CEO Jonathan Cherki in a statement to Crunchbase News, is that despite the tough year, one positive that emerged was the acceleration of digitization globally.
He went on to point out data indicating that China is expected to make more online sales than offline sales this year. He also expects the U.S. to grow as well. Ecommerce penetration of total retail sales went up from 15.8 percent in 2019 to 21.3 percent in the U.S. in 2020.
“There is a momentum and good opportunity with this market,” he added in his remarks to Crunchbase. “We found the best way to improve online sales is through customer acquisition. Traffic is all on mobile, so retailers needed to think about improving the experience. It went from a nice to have to a must have.”
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Contentsquare saw 100 percent year-over-year revenue growth over the past four years, with 50 percent of the business currently being generated in the U.S., said Cherki. In addition to the company working with 750 customers -of which approximately one third are among the Fortune 500 - within the past year, it also acquired two companies: DareBoost and Adapt My Web.
Contentsquare has also analyzed tens of billions of customer interactions every day across sites that process $1.5 billion in transactions daily.
The new funding will enable expansion in the U.S. and Europe, along with plans to launch in new territories including Asia and Latin America. It will also expand M&A activities and further develop its go-to-market strategy with plans to hire 1,500 people in three years, Cherki said.
“That is one of the rationales of getting SoftBank on board,” he added. “They have great experience in international expansion.”
