Slintel lands $20 million in Series A funding led by GGV Capital to use AI to predict your next customer

One of the biggest challenges facing most businesses today is identifying who their potential buyers are. Before now, companies wasted billions on untargeted TV advertising with very little to show for it. Others spent millions on search ads making companies like Google and Microsoft billions in ad revenues.

What about if there is a better way to know who your customers are? Enter Slintel, a Silicon Valley tech startup that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to predict your next customer. Unlike shooting in the dark at a moving target, Slintel captures technographic-powered buying intent and helps companies uncover 3% of active buyers in their target market. The startup also evaluates over 100 billion data points and analyzes factors such as buyer journeys, technology adoption patterns, and other digital footprints to deliver market and sales intelligence.

Today, Slintel announced it has raised $20 million in Series A funding to expand globally and build a powerful, reliable marketplace for b2b sellers and buyers. The round was led by GGV Capital, a global venture capital firm that is known for its investments in successful companies such as Airbnb, HashiCorp, Peloton, Poshmark, Slack, Square, StockX, and Wish. Existing backers Accel, Sequoia Capital India, and Stellaris Venture Partners also participated in the round.

The announcement comes shortly after the company reported that its revenue and customer base has grown by over 5x in the last 12 months. Buying intent is the fastest-growing category in the $24 billion sales and marketing intelligence space, and Slintel is one of the fastest-growing companies in this space.

B2B buyers today are more digital than ever, and buyer intelligence is taking over traditional sales and marketing intelligence as buyers embark on complex journeys online. It is estimated that by 2025, 80% of all B2B buying will occur on digital channels.

Slintel was founded in 2018 by Deepak Anchala and Rahul Bhattacharya to help go-to-market teams understand where buyers are in their journey, what their pain points are, their adoption of technology, and churn data to get a 360-degree view of the buyer.

Hans Tung, Managing Partner at GGV Capital, was ranked at #3 in Forbes’ prestigious Midas List this year for the strides he made in the strategic investments landscape in 2020. When asked about the investment, Hans stated, “With the global pandemic completely changing the way companies operate, B2B transactions have gone more digital than ever before. Inside sales teams are closing high-value, multi-million dollar deals while working remotely, and products like Slintel are enabling companies to do this by helping them re-imagine their entire sales process for today’s environment.”

“The next big wave in the enterprise space is (the) use of AI to rethink processes, and all AI at its core requires data,” said Alok Goyal, Partner at Stellaris Venture Partners. “I am therefore bullish on the entire data stack, including data which is either proprietary or inferred data that is not easy to replicate. Slintel is in the second category. Their ability to predict strong prospects is a relatively unique capability, and it is very easy to sell due to a direct correlation to (the) top line for their customers.”

“Slintel has one of the best GTM engines that we’ve seen in any startup, and the consistency with which the team has been able to deliver on their growth targets is commendable,” said Prayank Swaroop, Partner at Accel. “We’re looking at a company that’s changing the marketing and sales intelligence sphere as we know it, and we couldn’t be happier to be a part of their board,” he added.