ThoughtSpot Inc. is a business intelligence analytics search software provider based out of Palo Alto, Calif. The tech company, founded in June 2012, intends to “put the power of a thousand analysts in every business person’s hands” by automating the work of business analysts.
ThoughSpot, which has offices in London and Seattle, was co-founded by former engineers from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo, Oracle and other Silicon Valley firms. The SaaS provider lists customers including Amway, Bed Bath and Beyond, BT, Capital One, Celebrity Cruises, Chevron Federal Credit Union, De Beers, Insurethebox and Scotiabank.
The startup has raised about $160 million in five rounds of funding from backers including Lightspeed Ventures, General Catalyst, Hewlett Packard Pathfinder, and Khosla Ventures. In its most recent funding round last year, the company raised $60 million in a round led by LightSpeed and Capital One Growth Ventures as it seeks to double down on the big data and business analytics market, projected to reach $203 billion by 2020, according to research firm IDC.
In August, ThoughtSpot launched a new product called SpotIQ, which leverages artificial intelligence to generate hundreds of insights from data in a company’s cloud or on-premise storage systems. In doing so, the software automates tasks performed by business analysts, data scientists and graphic designers, offering up valuable insights including employee- and team-specific charts.
ThoughtSpot Chief Executive Officer Ajeet Singh suggests that, in a single click, the company can complete a job that would previously take 40,000 employee hours to do, as reported by CNBC.
Singh, a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of cloud computing giant Nutanix, indicated that his firm will use its most recent funding to double down on research and development, hiring and international expansion. The startup heads off against old guard industry leaders including Microsoft, with its Power BI platform, and Tableau software, in the increasingly crowded big data and business analytics space. Moving forward, ThoughtSpot seeks to expand operations in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, with the goal of putting search-driven analytics in the hands of 20 million users by 2020.
