Funding for AI Sales and Marketing Companies Exceeds $5.2 Billion

If you follow the money, AI in sales and marketing technology is trending toward a much more intelligent future.

According to analysis of Crunchbase data, there are 1,141 companies that fit into the category groups of both “Sales and Marketing” and “Artificial Intelligence.” These are predominantly software companies selling sales and marketing solutions, of which 488* have raised funding totaling more than $5.2 billion (in USD).

Let’s dig into the data on these 488 funded companies to see what else we can learn:

• 2018 Funding: 147 companies raised funding in 2018 totaling $1.07 billion.

• Categories: The most common categories within the Sales and Marketing group are: advertising (141 companies), predictive analytics (130 companies), marketing automation (119 companies), digital marketing (74 companies), CRM (64 companies), mobile (48 companies), sales automation (48 companies), e-commerce (42 companies), brand marketing (37 companies), and social media marketing (33 companies).

• Headquarters: San Francisco is the most popular headquarters with 54 companies calling it home. Those SF-based companies have raised $978 million. New York is second with 47 companies at $610 million and London is third with 40 companies at $352 million. Paris is a distant fourth with 14 companies at $145 million.

• Status: Of the 488 companies, 57 have been acquired and eight have held an initial public offering (IPO).

• Employees: 11-50 employees is the most common range at 46.9% of companies. 1-10 is next at 30.1% of companies. Only 10.9% companies have 101+ employees.

• Founding Year: 2018 saw a significant drop in number of AI-powered sales and marketing companies founded with only 13, raising a combined $8.6 million. This was down from 49 companies founded in 2017, which have raised $71.2 million to date. 2014 and 2015 were the peak years for AI-powered startups with 67 companies being founded in each of the years.

• Funding Rounds: The companies have 1,303 combined funding rounds for an average of 2.7.

• Distribution of Funding: 111 companies have raised $10 million or more. 56 companies have raised $25 million or more. 27 companies have raised $50 million or more. Six companies have raised $100 million or more.

Top 10 by Funding Total

The highest funded companies feature a diverse mix of technologies, including: marketing and sales automation, video, data intelligence, mobile marketing, customer experience, personalization, and conversational AI. These 10** have a combined $1.3 billion in funding.

1. InsideSales.com ($251,200,024): InsideSales.com designs and develops sales automation platforms.

2. Sentient Technologies ($174,380,450): Sentient Technologies is the world's leading artificial intelligence company specializing in evolutionary intelligence.

3. Video++ ($165,537,993): Video++ is a leading company in "AI + Entertainment" in China and its mission is "Make Video Valuable". The company is a leader in video content recognition and video object tracking technology.

4. Seismic ($164,500,000): Seismic offers a global sales and marketing enablement solution for improving close rates and delivering larger deals for sales.

5. Radius ($107,550,000): Radius is an enterprise customer data platform (CDP) on a mission to power data intelligence across all B2B applications, channels and users. Radius helps companies discover, manage and reach their audiences.

6. Leanplum ($98,225,000): Leanplum is a mobile marketing platform that delivers meaningful engagement across messaging and the in-app experience.

7. BloomReach ($97,000,000): BloomReach takes customer experience to the next level via the world's first open and intelligent Digital Experience Platform.

8. Conversica ($87,000,000): Leader in conversational AI for business; the only provider of AI-driven lead engagement software for marketing and sales organizations.

9. Dynamic Yield ($83,250,000): Dynamic Yield provides personalization, recommendations, 1:1 messaging, and yield optimization across web, mobile, and email.

10. EverString ($78,700,000): EverString helps companies leverage data to optimize sales and marketing capabilities.

Crunchbase maintains its database through a network of 3,500 global investment firms, community contributors, machine learning algorithms, and data analysts (source). Visit www.Crunchbase.com to learn more.

And, if you need a jumpstart researching AI-powered solutions for your business, check out AI Score for Marketers and the Marketing AI Buyer’s Guide. Both Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute resources are free and ungated.