AlphaSense looks to increase India presence, raises $225 mn in funding

AlphaSense, the market intelligence and search platform, turned a unicorn after it raised $225 million in a Series D financing round led by the growth equity business of Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Viking Global Investors. It plans to use the funds to grow offices globally, including its innovation hubs in India, located in Pune, Mumbai, and Delhi.

The New York-based firm has been valued at $1.7 billion. This is nearly double the valuation, from its $180 million Series C funding in September 2021 which was also led by Goldman Sachs and Viking Global. The firm said the new funding round includes a substantial debt investment from funds or accounts managed by BlackRock earlier this year.

“We recently doubled our India presence to over 325 people with the recent addition of our Delhi office,” said Raj Neervannan, chief technology officer and co-founder of AlphaSense. “With our hiring efforts underway to recruit the talent, we expect our employee count to continue to grow substantially in the coming months.”

AlphaSense has a base of 3,500 customers. These include asset management firms and banks, and companies in wide-ranging industries such as energy, industrials, consumer goods, and technology.

The firm did not reveal the share of business it gets from the Indian market, the number of customers it has here, and its top clients in the country. However, it said over 30 per cent of its employees are based in India now.

AlphaSense’s platform leverages proprietary search technology powered by AI and NLP (natural language processing) to extract insights from an extensive universe of public and private content. These include company filings, earnings transcripts, expert call transcripts, news, trade journals, and equity research.

The firm said its annual recurring revenue (ARR) now exceeds $100 million.

Holger Staude, a managing director within the growth equity business at Goldman Sachs, said the firm is demonstrating a focus on building an enduring business in a large market.

John Doyle, director of venture lending at BlackRock, said AlphaSense is enabling smarter data-driven decisions for users across industries and roles.