HighTouch Raises $80M at $1.2B Valuation - AI Marketing Tools
The Evolution of Data Synchronization for Customer Engagement
Over the past decade, companies such as Segment have fundamentally altered how businesses leverage APIs to consolidate data from various applications, ultimately enhancing marketing efforts. Now, Hightouch – established by a former engineering manager from Segment – is announcing $80 million in funding to spearhead the next phase: a platform designed to synchronize data warehouses and other sources with sales, marketing, and customer service teams.
Series C Funding and Valuation
Sapphire Ventures is leading this Series C investment round, with participation from NVC, Amplify Ventures, ICONIQ Growth, Bain Capital Ventures, and Y Combinator. This funding significantly elevates Hightouch’s post-money valuation to $1.2 billion. This represents a doubling of the company’s valuation compared to its previous funding round in 2023.
The secured capital will be allocated to ongoing technological development, business expansion initiatives, and talent acquisition.
From Segment to Hightouch: Addressing Integration Challenges
Tejas Manohar, co-CEO of Hightouch, alongside co-CEO Kashish Gupta and CTO Josh Curl, explained that their experience at Segment highlighted the need for solutions beyond simply improving integrations through APIs. While this was a crucial step forward, it often proved too complex for practical implementation due to the sheer volume of data sources organizations manage.
“The process of getting data into Segment presented a considerable challenge for our customers,” Manohar stated, particularly as data residing in warehouses was primarily intended for analytical purposes, not marketing applications.
In 2019, Manohar and Curl, collaborating with Gupta – a machine learning expert – founded Hightouch to address these limitations.
Hightouch’s Core Offerings: CDP and AI Decisioning
Hightouch has concentrated its development efforts on two primary areas.
The first is its core Customer Data Platform (CDP). This platform, designed for both technical and non-technical users, marked a significant advancement upon its 2020 launch by shifting the focus from app-based data to leveraging machine learning and other tools for easier utilization of data warehouse information in marketing, sales, and customer service.
“Cloud data warehouses have effectively become the new customer data platforms,” noted Rajeev Dham, a partner at Sapphire Ventures, who will be joining the board.
Applications include the creation of personalized campaigns, the implementation of loyalty programs, data synchronization from warehouses to over 250 tools – encompassing major CRM and marketing platforms – and more. Users can construct SQL queries to transmit data from warehouses to various applications, complemented by a graphical interface for non-technical users.
Hightouch’s second product, AI Decisioning, delves deeper into machine learning and automation. This agentic AI product allows users to define a specific objective, prompting it to conduct multiple experiments and tests to identify optimal campaign strategies.
The Rise of AI and Future Growth
AI Decisioning became available in August 2024. While Hightouch wasn’t actively seeking funding, strong customer demand for the AI product prompted the company to pursue this Series C round.
“Customer interest in the AI product was the driving force behind our decision to initiate fundraising,” Gupta explained, “as we now have a clear and effective use for the capital.”
Manohar acknowledged that the rollout of the AI product to all existing customers – including companies like Spotify, PetSmart, Tripadvisor, and Grammarly – contributed to its adoption. However, the broader AI trend also fueled new business acquisition for Hightouch.
Beyond simply accelerating processes, companies are increasingly focused on leveraging AI to enhance customer experiences and maximize lifetime value and revenue.
“Organizations are keenly interested in how AI can be used to deliver superior customer experiences and increase lifetime value and revenue,” Manohar said. The AI Decisioning agents can “execute thousands of experiments to determine the most effective experience to provide.”
Previous Funding Rounds
Hightouch’s prior 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.
