Talkdesk, a cloud-based contact centre software provider, announced $230million in Series D funding. This more than triples its valuation to $10 Billion, Talkdesk founder Tiago Paiva confirmed with TechCrunch.For this round, new investors Whale Rock Capital Management and TI Platform Management joined the board, along with existing investors Amity Ventures and Franklin Templeton, Top Tier Capital Partners and Viking Global Investors.Talkdesk leverages artificial intelligence and machine-learning to provide better customer service for enterprise and midmarket businesses. It has over 1,800 customers, including IBM Acxiom Trivago, Fujitsu, Acxiom and Trivago.Paiva stated that the global pandemic was an important part of our customer interaction and our interactions with them, all from their home. Online ordering became less important when you consider that chat, email, and phone interactions are all possible. Contact centers have become a core part of every company.Talkdesk, a San Francisco-based company, now has $498million in total funding. It was founded in 2011 and is now headquartered in San Francisco. It participated in Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt New York 2012. It received $143 million in Series C funding last July, which gave it a valuation of $3 billion. Talkdesk had previously raised $100 million in 2018Paiva stated that the 2020 round was intended to boost company growth and expand to almost 2,000 employees. Paiva said that there was a lot of interest from investors in the Series D, as well as a lot more inbound interest.Paiva stated that although we weren't looking for new capital, we ended last year with more cash in the bank than the previous round. However, the investors were fantastic and wanted to see it succeed.Talkdesks employs half of its staff in product and engineering. He plans to increase the funding for this area as well as add to the support team. The company plans to expand its operations in Latin America, Europe and Asia, as well as Australia.The company introduced new features this year, including Talkdesk Workspace (a customizable interface for contact centers) and Talkdesk Builder (a set of tools that allow customization across workspaces and routing, reporting, integrations and reports). It launched tools for healthcare and financial services organizations, including contact center tools. This tool is billed as the first in the industry to put a human in the loop for contact centers.Paiva stated that Talkdesk's first chief financial officer, Sydney Carey was appointed by the company. This gives the company a 50% female executive team. Carey comes from Sumo Logic where she managed the initial public offering of the company in 2020. She has a background in SaaS.Paiva said that we were searching for a CFO to hire our executive team in the last couple of years. We had no timeline and were just looking for the right person. We wanted Sydney to be our CFO.Paiva did not hint at an IPO, but TI Platform Management cofounders Trang Nguyen (paiva's first company) and Alex Bangash (TI Platform Management cofounders) said that they expect the company to go in that direction in future.Talkdesk is a great example of what happens when a strong team comes together behind a winning idea, they stated in a written statement. Talkdesk is almost ubiquitous today as a SaaS platform, with widespread adoption in a wide range of industries and integrations to the most popular enterprise cloud platforms like Zendesk, Salesforce, and Slack.
