SoftBank Vision Fund 2 puts $220m in talent management startup Eightfold AI; valuation doubles to $2.1B

Eightfold.AI has raised over $410 million in funding thus far, together with the present spherical, with $350 million coming within the final six months.

5-year-old Eightfold AI, which helps massive enterprises comparable to Air Asia, Tata Communications, Dolby, Nutanix, others, rent and retain expertise, has raised a brand new spherical of capital eight months after it raised $125 million in Collection D funding. The startup has now secured $220 million in Collection E funding spherical led by SoftBank Imaginative and prescient Fund 2. Traders from earlier rounds together with Normal Catalyst, Capital One Ventures, Basis Capital, IVP, and Lightspeed Enterprise Companions additionally participated within the new spherical. With the newest fund infusion, the startup’s valuation has greater than doubled to $2.1 billion from $1 billion in Collection D spherical, Ashutosh Garg, Co-founder and CEO, Eightfold.ai advised Monetary Specific On-line.

The corporate will deploy the capital in the direction of improvement of its synthetic intelligence-based Expertise Intelligence Platform and broaden its associate ecosystem aside from rising its India operations. The final and present funding rounds have been raised amid the rising and altering work setting because of the pandemic. In consequence, companies have been specializing in reskilling and upskilling programmes for his or her workers which can also be among the many key challenges for the worldwide workforce at present.

“The pandemic has fueled the significance of managing expertise in quite a few methods. Probably the most seen is that of distant work environments, which opens up expertise to organizations that they may not have beforehand thought-about. It additionally locations a premium on understanding what your workers are in search of out of their careers. They’ve many extra choices now as a result of they’ll apply anyplace, so what are you (firms) doing to facilitate their progress to the following stage?” added Garg.

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The corporate has raised over $410 million in funding thus far, together with the present spherical, with $350 million coming within the final six months. “Powered by AI and machine studying, Eightfold’s platform supplies international enterprises with a single answer for managing your entire expertise lifecycle, together with hiring, retaining, and rising a various international workforce,” stated Deep Nishar, Senior Managing Associate at SoftBank Funding Advisers.

In response to Gartner, spending on SaaS purposes by companies in India will develop by 20.8 per cent to $1.41 billion and 20.2 per cent to $1.69 billion in 2022. The tip-user spending on public cloud companies in India will probably be price $4.4 billion in 2021, up 31.4 per cent from 2020. Eightfold’s funding is the second deal involving Indian startups or Indian founders by SoftBank Imaginative and prescient Fund 2 introduced within the final two days. On Tuesday, one other software-as-a-service startup Whatfix, which helps companies improve consumer adoption of purposes they use, had introduced a $90 million spherical led by the second Imaginative and prescient Fund. Eightfold is the fourth startup with operations in India and/or different international locations elevating funding from the second fund after Lenskart and Meesho aside from Whatfix.