Grammarly Raises $200M at $13B Valuation - AI Writing Assistant

Grammarly Secures $200 Million in Funding

Grammarly, a widely-used automated writing assistant, has successfully obtained $200 million in a new funding round. This investment values the company at $13 billion.

Investment Details and Future Plans

The funding was provided by new investors, including Baillie Gifford and funds managed by BlackRock. Grammarly intends to utilize these funds to expedite product innovation and expand its team.

Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, Grammarly’s global head of product, emphasized the significance of this funding as a validation of the company’s business performance.

Focus on AI and User Trust

Grammarly is committed to ongoing investment in its AI technology. The company will continue to refine its natural language processing and machine learning capabilities.

This development aims to deliver more personalized feedback to users regarding their communication. Strengthening user trust remains a key priority for Grammarly.

Adapting to the Evolving Landscape of Communication

Roy-Chowdhury highlighted the changing dynamics of remote work and global teams. He believes there's a substantial opportunity to assist individuals in communicating more effectively within these evolving scenarios.

The new funding will accelerate efforts to address these challenges and enhance communication for a distributed workforce.

Expanding Beyond Core Functionality

Grammarly’s future vision extends beyond simply ensuring conciseness, consistency, and grammatical correctness. The company plans to introduce new categories of suggested improvements.

Furthermore, Grammarly aims to become increasingly integrated into users’ daily workflows, achieving greater ubiquity in the digital space.

New Application Launches

Grammarly is actively expanding its product offerings, exemplified by the recent launch of Grammarly for Mac and Windows. This desktop application integrates with popular tools like Microsoft Office, Slack, Discord, and Jira.

The new app is designed to serve as a central writing tool, overcoming limitations previously associated with browser extensions.

Developer Tools and Integration

Grammarly recently introduced Grammarly for Developers, featuring a Text Editor SDK. This allows programmers to seamlessly embed Grammarly’s editing features into any web application.

The SDK provides developers with access to Grammarly’s automated editing capabilities with minimal code. Users of the integrated application can benefit from Grammarly’s features, even without a direct Grammarly subscription.

Previous Funding Rounds

This latest funding round follows a previous investment of $90 million in October 2019, which valued the company at over $1 billion. General Catalyst led both that round and a prior $110 million round in May 2017.

Widespread Integration and Impact

Currently, Grammarly functions across more than 500,000 applications and websites. These include email clients, enterprise software, and word processors.

The company recognizes the increasing importance of effective communication in a digitally connected world and aims to help users achieve their goals.

Investor Perspective

Peter Singlehurst, head of private companies at Baillie Gifford, stated that the world is experiencing a surge in digital communication, yet effective communication is becoming increasingly challenging.

He believes Grammarly is uniquely positioned to address this problem, praising the company’s vision and its ability to continually improve its product.

Freemium Model and Pricing

Grammarly operates on a freemium model. While a free version is available, paid subscriptions unlock additional features.

These premium features include advanced suggestions for word choice, sentence rewrites, tone adjustments, fluency, formality, and plagiarism detection. Paid tiers are offered at $12, $20, and $30 per month.