Hightouch Secures $80M at $1.2B Valuation for AI-Driven Marketing Tools

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In the last decade, companies like Segment revolutionized how businesses used APIs to integrate data from various apps, enhancing marketing strategies. Now, a startup named Hightouch, founded by a former Segment engineering manager, is making waves with an $80 million funding announcement. This funding will fuel the development of a platform that helps sales, marketing, and customer service teams sync data from warehouses and other sources, using AI agents to streamline the process and enhance user experiences. Sapphire Ventures is spearheading this Series C round, joined by investors like NVC, Amplify Ventures, ICONIQ Growth, Bain Capital Ventures, and Y Combinator. This infusion of capital boosts Hightouch's valuation to a whopping $1.2 billion post-money, doubling their valuation from the previous round in 2023. The funds will be used to further develop Hightouch’s technology, expand business development, and hire new talent. Tejas Manohar, co-CEO of Hightouch, along with co-founders Kashish Gupta (co-CEO) and Josh Curl (CTO), noted that their time at Segment taught them that there was more to be done than just improving API integrations. Although a significant step forward, the approach could be too complex for many organizations due to the sheer volume of data sources. “Getting data into Segment was a real hassle for our customers,” Manohar explained, pointing out that data warehouses, where much of the data resided, were typically used for analytics rather than marketing. In 2019, as Segment grew (and later got acquired by Twilio for $3.2 billion), Manohar and Curl, together with Gupta—a machine learning expert—decided to start Hightouch. Hightouch has been developing tools in two key areas. The first is their core customer data platform (CDP), which caters to both non-technical users and data scientists. Launched in 2020, Hightouch’s CDP was groundbreaking because it shifted the focus from app-based data to leveraging machine learning to make data from warehouses more usable for marketing, sales, and customer service tasks. Rajeev Dham, a partner at Sapphire Ventures who is joining the board, said, “They realized that cloud data warehouses are the new customer data platforms.” This platform helps in creating personalized campaigns, loyalty programs, and syncing data to over 250 tools, including major CRM and marketing platforms. Users can craft SQL queries to send data to various apps for specific purposes, and there’s a user-friendly graphical interface for non-technical users to create queries. The second product, AI Decisioning, launched in August 2024, dives deeper into machine learning and automation. This agentic AI product allows users to set a goal, and it runs multiple experiments and tests to recommend the most effective campaigns. Initially, Hightouch wasn’t planning to raise more funds, being described as "capital efficient" with money already in the bank. However, the strong customer interest in the AI product prompted them to go ahead with this Series C round. “That’s what motivated us to say, ‘All right, let’s have this conversation, and let’s raise the round,’ because now we finally have a good use for capital,” Gupta explained. Manohar noted that the rollout of the AI product to existing customers, including companies like Spotify, PetSmart, Tripadvisor, and Grammarly, helped its adoption. But the AI craze also brought in new business thanks to AI Decisioning. While speed has always been a compelling reason for adopting AI, Manohar pointed out that the motivations are evolving. “Companies, at the CEO and chief digital officer and chief marketing officer level, are really interested in how we can use AI to give our customers a better experience and increase lifetime value and revenue across our customer base,” he said. The AI Decisioning agents can “run thousands of experiments to figure out the best experience to deliver,” Manohar added. Hightouch’s previous funding rounds include a seed round in 2020 from Y Combinator and others, a $40 million round led by ICONIQ Growth, and a $38 million round in 2023.

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