Gong gets $250M to help sales teams upskill and boost revenue

HR tech is having yet another busy week in terms of deals and investment rounds.

Hot on the heels of freelancer marketplace Malt raising $97m from Goldman Sachs and other investors, California-based revenue intelligence company Gong has closed a $250m Series E.

This investment round comes within six months of a $200m Series D and brings the company’s total funding to $584m. In addition, Gong has now been valued at $7.25bn.

The Series E was led by Franklin Templeton – existing Gong investors, including Salesforce Ventures, Sequoia and Thrive Capital, also participated in the round.

Gong’s AI-powered platform provides in-depth insights into business outcomes, particularly those linked to sales and marketing. It also provides recommendations of actions that those customer-facing teams should take in order to drive success and win more business in new markets.

In addition, Gong has also integrated a coaching platform for sales teams into its platform. This offering is fully virtual and aimed at helping these customer-facing teams, which traditionally rely on face-to-face interactions, be as successful as possible in the continuing reality of remote working.

After six years of operation, Gong claims to have attracted more than 2000 customers, including LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey, PayPal, Twillo, and Slack, and it now has 550 employees on hand to support those clients.

Talking about the financing, Franklin Templeton Ryan Biggs commented: “Technologies aimed at optimizing productivity and customer satisfaction became more important than ever in the past year as the business world transitioned to a predominantly remote work model,”

“We believe [Gong’s] product has become a fundamental requirement for professionals looking to drive sales based on the true needs of customers.”

Gong CEO Amit Bendov added: “As professionals across the globe were forced to connect with customers remotely for the first time, they became even more reliant on data and insights to win the hearts and minds of their customers.

“Gong was no longer a luxury, but a necessity, and it’s become clear that our product, which makes recommendations based on reality, has the potential to change the way we all do business.”