AI Startup Glean Raises $260 Million to Develop ‘Google for Work’

Generative AI Startup, Glean has raised a $260M Series E funding round, pushing its valuation to $4.6 billion. The new investment, co-led by Altimeter and DST Global, also includes contributions from Craft Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, and SoftBank Vision Fund 2. Existing investors Coatue, General Catalyst, ICONIQ Growth, IVP, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Sequoia Capital also participated in this round.

Founded in 2019 by Arvind Jain (CEO), T.R. Vishwanath, Piyush Prahladka, and Tony Gentilcore, Glean provides an AI assistant and enterprise search platform called ‘Workplace Search’ that connects to a company’s internal data sources to help employees find information and answer questions. 

The platform uses advanced search, retrieval augmented generation (RAG), and large language models to generate personalised answers grounded in an organization’s proprietary data.

Jain previously worked as a distinguished engineer at Google for over a decade and co-founded Rubrik.

The company also revealed new features for its ‘Work AI Platform’ which is an one centralised platform for quickly and securely deploying AI in the enterprise.

Glean’s Work AI Platform has introduced new features, including advanced prompting capabilities such as multi-step prompts for complex tasks, a prompt builder for easy creation and sharing, and a prompt library for organizational use. Additionally, Glean is integrating with customer service applications Zendesk and Salesforce Service Cloud to enhance support operations.

Work AI Platform offers other services as well. 

Glean Chat AI assistant uses company data to answer employee questions, streamlining information access. Glean Apps offers no-code tools for creating custom AI agents and chatbots, empowering users to build tailored solutions without needing extensive technical skills. The Search feature helps identify subject matter experts within the company, facilitating better knowledge sharing. 

Additionally, Glean’s platform now includes AI-powered summarisation and analysis capabilities, which enhance data interpretation and decision-making processes.

In just the past year, Glean more than tripled its business, and the company’s  valuation has more than doubled in the past six months, reflecting growing demand for its AI solutions. The company’s user engagement is notable, with Glean Assistant users averaging five queries per day and an impressive 40% DAU/MAU ratio.