Onward! Announcing Algolia’s $110 Million in New Funding

Today, we announced our latest round of funding of $110 million with our lead investor Accel and new investor Salesforce Ventures along with many others. 

In addition to being incredibly grateful at reaching this milestone and proud of what our team has accomplished in such a short time, I’m energized by what lies ahead. 

On any journey, it’s always helpful to take a step back (and a breath) to appreciate how far you’ve come and appreciate how far you still have left to go to achieve your vision.

It all started with a vision and mission.

When Julien and I started Algolia in 2012, it was clear that the world would only be more digitally immersed as more websites, apps and digital content were being produced at an increasing rate. Helping users search, discover and navigate through this digital world would be critical for the success of businesses of all sizes.

Our vision at Algolia from day 1 has been for every business to be able to deliver the best experience possible to its users — a search and discovery experience that is lightning fast, personalized, and highly relevant — one that helps people find what they want across this digital universe AND how they want via any type of device at home, at work, and on-the-go. 

In pursuing this vision, our mission has been to enable every developer and product team to build consumer-grade search that is easy to implement and easy to tailor and tune to deliver engaging digital experiences to their users that maximize growth.

It has been an amazing journey already. 

In just seven years, we’ve already come so far with an amazing team, a strong culture and unshaken conviction in what we are doing to deliver on our vision and mission.

Since 2012, Algolia’s platform has processed over 1 trillion search queries, and we are privileged to now have over 8,000 customers and are supporting 70 billion searches per month. 

Our employee base now consists of 350 Algolians across 6 offices worldwide — and we are hiring!

And, just in the past several months, I’m humbled by some of the milestones, partnerships and accolades we’ve been able to achieve together including: 

• August 2019: Algolia was honored to be named #448 on the INC 5000 of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies 
• July 2019: Algolia’s Summer 2019 product launch made major technology advancements in personalization, mobile and voice search (see the webinar replay here)
• June 2019: Algolia on Microsoft Azure was made available to support large-scale, global, fast search for global enterprises 
• May 2019: Algolia expanded into Japan and APAC
• April 2019: Algolia was named as one of the top 50 highest-rated private cloud computing companies to work for 
• March 2019: A study by Forrester Research showed that Algolia customers achieve $73 million in incremental revenue along with a low TCO and 3 – 10X ROI through Algolia-powered search and discovery.

Big things ahead. This is just the beginning.

With the new funding, Algolia will be able to propel towards our shared vision and accelerate innovation efforts on behalf of millions of companies that must ensure users are quickly getting what they want through a delightful experience that boosts engagement, conversion and growth. As we look forward for the rest of this year and beyond, we will:

• Continue to break down the barriers that get in the way of building great search, so that any company can deliver the best search and discovery experience to its users — while making it incredibly easy for IT teams, developers and business owners to implement, manage and optimize these Algolia-powered experiences. 
• Double down on applying machine learning to help businesses deliver even more relevant, personalized experiences to their users. This includes analyzing user queries to infer, recommend and create an even better user experience. We’ve just scratched the surface there, and, by processing over 70 billion searches per month through our search-as-a-service platform and suite of APIs, no solution provider and partner is in a better position to deliver on this than Algolia.
• Enrich our conversational and voice search capabilities across web, mobile and voice-first channels to meet increasing consumer demand to search any way, any where, any time. 
• Expand geographically across the Americas, Europe, Asia, Japan and new, emerging markets. This includes growing our global infrastructure of 16 data centers across 70 regions so that we can provide relevant, reliable, lightning fast performance anywhere in the world.
• Invest in our culture and employees through training and development programs, as well as through ongoing hiring of skilled professionals to expand our reach and industry expertise.

“For too long, organizations have had to choose between building resource-intensive search tools by themselves and using lower cost, but inflexible, set-it-and-forget-it search solutions. Algolia solves for both by removing the cost and complexity of building search while empowering businesses to create tailored experiences that engage and delight customers. Our rapid growth underscores both the market’s need to deliver amazing consumer experiences, and Algolia’s ability to help them achieve these experiences.”

Many thanks.

Building a company that is “built to last” and transforms how businesses engage with their users is no small task and requires the right investors, customers, and team. 

• Thank you to all of our participating investors including Accel, Salesforce Ventures, Alven, DAG Ventures, Founders Circle, Owl Rock Capital, SaaStr Fund and World Innovation Lab, and welcome Accel’s Nate Niparko to Algolia’s board of directors.
• Thank you to our 8,000+ customers whose trust in Algolia is appreciated and product feedback is invaluable.
• To our 350 employees, thank you for your grit, candor, humility, trust and care for one another, as well as your passion and efforts to make Algolia what it has become today and what it will become in the future.

While the journey has already been exhilarating every step of the way, I’m energized by what lies ahead and can’t wait to take big leaps forward with all of you.

Onward!

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For more information about Algolia’s funding announcement:

• Salesforce Ventures: Improving the Search Box: Our Investment in Algolia
• WiL (World Innovation Lab): Algolia: Setting the Bar High for Digital Search & Discovery
• Alven: Algolia raises $110m to support its tremendous growth
• Les Echos Executives: Algolia, Le Roi Du « Search » Pour Entreprise, Lève 110 Millions D’euros