Startups

AI-powered competitive enablement platform Klue lands $62M led by Tiger Global

Comment

Image Credits: Klue

Klue, an AI-powered competitive enablement platform, has raised $62 million in Series B funding led by Tiger Global, with participation from Salesforce Ventures.

The Vancouver-based company combines intel collection capabilities with a modern approach to content distribution aimed at providing users with the insights needed to drive revenue and business impact.

The platform automatically gathers competitive data from public and private external sources such as the news and competitor web page changes, as well as data from internal teams through integrations with platforms like Slack, Highspot and Salesforce. Klue aims to enable product marketers and competitive intelligence teams to increase their coverage of competitors.

“Our platform makes it easier to update competitive content, keep the organization informed on market changes, and enables sellers with real-time access to insights to improve competitive deal performance,” Jason Smith, the CEO and co-founder of Klue, told TechCrunch.

Smith outlined that Klue plans to use this latest round of funding to invest heavily in product development. The company will double down on its AI capabilities to make insight generation easier in order to unlock opportunities to expand its user base through new market development. Klue also plans to invest in product experience for its end-users to create a seamless connection between revenue teams and their access to competitive insights. It notes that the funding will also fuel its expansion into new verticals and markets.

Klue
Image Credits: Klue

Klue’s Series B funding follows its $15 million Series A round announced in September 2020. The round was led by Craft Ventures with participation from HWVP, existing investors OMERS Ventures, Rhino Ventures and BDC Ventures, along with several angel investors.

In terms of growth, Klue has seen 3x customer growth since its previous funding round. The company has served nearly 400 enterprise clients and more than 110,000 users since its launch in 2017.

“Our vision is for every department of every business to have a relevant, personalized and continuously updated lens into their competitor’s world. This system will be machine- and human-driven, automatically pulling raw intel from your co-workers, internal systems and across the web and curating it into organized, actionable insights,” Smith said.

Regarding future plans, Klue plans to find ways to reduce the burden of collecting intel and also automate insights. The company wants to introduce deeper integrations with enterprise tools like Slack, Salesforce, Gong, Highspot and Gainsights. Klue also plans to launch multi-user, collaborative and security features in the future that will allow users across departments to work independently and collectively within the same system.

The company also sees a future where Klue will support smaller companies with a lighter self-serve product. It also sees itself supporting B2C companies, such as retail and CPG companies that are concerned about competitive pricing, positioning, packaging and distribution. 

“We truly see Klue becoming the standard operating system for companies to see and know their competitor’s every move,” Smith said.

More TechCrunch

The global spend management sector is experiencing a tailwind of sorts. North America is arguably the biggest market in this space, but spend management companies have seen demand rise across…

Spend management startup SiFi raises $10M to grow further in Saudi Arabia

Neural Concept lets designers model how components will perform before they can be manufactured.

Swiss startup Neural Concept raises $27M to cut EV design time to 18 months

The StrictlyVC roadtrip continues! Coming off of sold-out events in London, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, we’re heading to Washington, D.C. for a cozy-vc-packed, evening at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre…

Don’t miss StrictlyVC in DC next week

X will now allow users to post consensually produced NSFW content as long as it is prominently labeled as such.

X tweaks rules to formally allow adult content

Ashby consolidates existing talent acquisition tools and leans heavily on AI to automate the more repetitive steps in the recruitment pipeline.

Ashby injects recruiting with a dose of AI

Spotify has announced it’s hiking subscriptions for customers in the U.S., the second such price increase in the space of a year. The music-streaming giant reports that premium pricing will…

Spotify to increase premium pricing in the US to $11.99 per month

Monzo has announced its 2024 financial results, revealing its first full-year pre-tax profit. The company also confirmed that it’s in the early stages of expanding into the broader European market…

UK neobank Monzo reports first full (pre-tax) profit, prepares for EU expansion with Dublin hub

Featured Article

Inside Apple’s efforts to build a better recycling robot

Last week, TechCrunch paid a visit to Apple’s Austin, Texas manufacturing facilities. Since 2013, the company has built its Mac Pro desktop about 20 minutes north of downtown. The 400,000 square foot facility sits in a maze of industry parks, a quick trip south from the company’s in-progress corporate campus. In recent years, the capital…

5 hours ago
Inside Apple’s efforts to build a better recycling robot

Early attempts at making dedicated hardware to house artificial intelligence smarts have been criticized as, well, a bit rubbish. But here’s an AI gadget-in-the-making that’s all about rubbish, literally: Finnish…

Binit is bringing AI to trash

Temasek has previously invested in Lenskart, and this new funding follows a $500 million investment by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority last year.

Temasek, Fidelity buy $200M stake in Lenskart at $5B valuation

Less than one year after its iOS launch, French startup ten ten has gone viral with a walkie talkie app that allows teens to send voice messages to their close…

French startup ten ten reinvents the walkie-talkie

Featured Article

Unicorn-rich VC Wesley Chan owes his success to a Craigslist job washing lab beakers

While all of Wesley Chan’s success has been well-documented over the years, his personal journey…not so much. Chan spoke to TechCrunch about the ways his life impacts how he invests in startups.

21 hours ago
Unicorn-rich VC Wesley Chan owes his success to a Craigslist job washing lab beakers

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump now has an account on the short-form video app that he once tried to ban. Trump’s TikTok account, which launched on Saturday night, features…

Trump takes off on TikTok

With fewer than 400,000 inhabitants, Iceland receives more than its fair share of tourists — and of venture capital.

Iceland’s startup scene is all about making the most of the country’s resources

Kobo put out a handful of new e-readers a few weeks back: color versions of the excellent Libra 2 and Clara, as well as an updated monochrome version of the…

Kobo’s new e-readers are a sidegrade most can skip (with one exception)

In an interview at his home near Reykjavík, the entrepreneur-turned-VC shared thoughts on his ventures and the journey that led him from Unity to climate tech, a homecoming of sorts.

Unity co-founder David Helgason’s next act: Gaming the climate crisis

Welcome back to TechCrunch’s Week in Review — TechCrunch’s newsletter recapping the week’s biggest news. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. Over the past eight years,…

Fisker collapsed under the weight of its founder’s promises

What is AI? We’ve put together this non-technical guide to give anyone a fighting chance to understand how and why today’s AI works.

WTF is AI?

President Joe Biden has vetoed H.J.Res. 109, a congressional resolution that would have overturned the Securities and Exchange Commission’s current approach to banks and crypto. Specifically, the resolution targeted the…

President Biden vetoes crypto custody bill

Featured Article

Industries may be ready for humanoid robots, but are the robots ready for them?

How large a role humanoids will play in that ecosystem is, perhaps, the biggest question on everyone’s mind at the moment.

2 days ago
Industries may be ready for humanoid robots, but are the robots ready for them?

VCs are clamoring to invest in hot AI companies, and willing to pay exorbitant share prices for coveted spots on their cap tables. Even so, most aren’t able to get…

VCs are selling shares of hot AI companies like Anthropic and xAI to small investors in a wild SPV market

The fashion industry has a huge problem: Despite many returned items being unworn or undamaged, a lot, if not the majority, end up in the trash. An estimated 9.5 billion…

Deal Dive: How (Re)vive grew 10x last year by helping retailers recycle and sell returned items

Tumblr officially shut down “Tips,” an opt-in feature where creators could receive one-time payments from their followers.  As of today, the tipping icon has automatically disappeared from all posts and…

You can no longer use Tumblr’s tipping feature 

Generative AI improvements are increasingly being made through data curation and collection — not architectural — improvements. Big Tech has an advantage.

AI training data has a price tag that only Big Tech can afford

Keeping up with an industry as fast-moving as AI is a tall order. So until an AI can do it for you, here’s a handy roundup of recent stories in the world…

This Week in AI: Can we (and could we ever) trust OpenAI?

Jasper Health, a cancer care platform startup, laid off a substantial part of its workforce, TechCrunch has learned.

General Catalyst-backed Jasper Health lays off staff

Featured Article

Live Nation confirms Ticketmaster was hacked, says personal information stolen in data breach

Live Nation says its Ticketmaster subsidiary was hacked. A hacker claims to be selling 560 million customer records.

3 days ago
Live Nation confirms Ticketmaster was hacked, says personal information stolen in data breach

Featured Article

Inside EV startup Fisker’s collapse: how the company crumbled under its founders’ whims

An autonomous pod. A solid-state battery-powered sports car. An electric pickup truck. A convertible grand tourer EV with up to 600 miles of range. A “fully connected mobility device” for young urban innovators to be built by Foxconn and priced under $30,000. The next Popemobile. Over the past eight years, famed vehicle designer Henrik Fisker…

3 days ago
Inside EV startup Fisker’s collapse: how the company crumbled under its founders’ whims

Late Friday afternoon, a time window companies usually reserve for unflattering disclosures, AI startup Hugging Face said that its security team earlier this week detected “unauthorized access” to Spaces, Hugging…

Hugging Face says it detected ‘unauthorized access’ to its AI model hosting platform

Featured Article

Hacked, leaked, exposed: Why you should never use stalkerware apps

Using stalkerware is creepy, unethical, potentially illegal, and puts your data and that of your loved ones in danger.

3 days ago
Hacked, leaked, exposed: Why you should never use stalkerware apps