Israeli-Founded Startup Gong Raises $65M, To Expand Local R&D Center

Gong.io, an Israeli startup that uses natural language processing and machine learning to improve sales and customer service, said on Tuesday that it raised $65 million in a Series C round led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from existing investors Battery Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Shlomo Kramer, Wing Venture Capital, NextWorld Capital, and Cisco Investments.

This round brings the total funding raised by Gong to $134 million since its founding in 2015.

The company developed the Gong Revenue Intelligence Platform™ which it says “captures and understands every customer interaction,” then delivering insights at scale and empowering revenue teams to make decisions based on data instead of opinions. Gong says its client list includes Pinterest, LinkedIn, GE, and Hubspot, among 700 companies that use its services.

Gong said it will use the new capital to meet market demand for its Revenue Intelligence Platform, investing in the company’s product, engineering, and go-to-market teams.

The company also announced that it doubled the number of its employees over the course of 2019 and intends to add 150 more jobs in 2020, including 100 jobs in the fields of AI engineering, data science at its Israeli R&D center. Gong is headquartered in San Francisco.

“Revenue intelligence is a perfect example of how advancements in AI are making a huge impact. If AI can interpret X-ray images better than doctors and AI can drive better than most of us, isn’t it time that AI capture and understand customer interactions better than salespeople?” said Gong CEO and co-founder, Amit Bendov. “We’re thrilled to continue fulfilling the strong market pull for our Revenue Intelligence Platform and help more and more revenue teams find success by saying, ‘Goodbye, opinions; hello, reality.’”