Glean, an AI-powered search startup, secures new funding round led by Altimeter and doubles its valuation.

• Glean, an AI-powered search startup, announced on Tuesday that it had raised $260 million in a Series E funding round, valuing the company at $4.6 billion, which is more than double its last reported valuation.
• The round is being led by Altimeter and DST Global, and includes Craft Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, all of which are new investors in the company.
• Glean competes with a group of well-funded gen AI startups and tech giants, challenging Microsoft Copilot and aiming to disrupt the cognitive search tool market, including providers like Perplexity.

Glean, an AI-powered search startup, announced on Tuesday that it has raised $260 million in a funding round that values the company at $4.6 billion, more than double its last reported valuation. The Palo Alto, California-based firm, ranked No. 43 on this year's CNBC Disruptor 50 list, has now raised more than $600 million to date from more than 20 investors.

Glean competes with a group of well-funded generative AI startups and tech giants, including Microsoft Copilot and Amazon Q, in the field of cognitive search tools. The company aims to disrupt the market by providing innovative solutions and competing with established providers such as Perplexity, Coveo, Sinequa, and LucidWork.

The Series E round of Glean, led by Altimeter and DST Global, has attracted new investors including Craft Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, and SoftBank Vision Fund 2.

The investors in the round include Coatue, General Catalyst, ICONIQ Growth, IVP, Kleiner Perkins, Latitude Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Sequoia Capital.

In 2019, Arvind Jain, CEO and founder of Glean, launched the company with a group of former Google engineers as an enterprise search engine. However, the company soon shifted its focus to generative AI. Jain has described Glean as a combination of Google and ChatGPT for businesses, offering conversational AI to sort through internal data, retrieve information, and provide quick answers. Jain is also the founder of Rubrik, which had a successful IPO in April.

Jain announced in a blog post that businesses are currently undergoing a significant AI transformation, which is predicted to be as significant as previous major technology shifts such as the internet, mobile, and cloud.

According to IDC, global enterprise spending on generative AI is expected to increase from $16 billion in 2023 to $143 billion in 2027, accounting for 28% of total AI expenditures.

In 2021, AI startups experienced a significant increase in funding, with five times the level of investment compared to the previous year. CB Insights reports that 36 generative AI startups have become unicorns, as valuations soared and corporate investors such as Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Google led the way.