Ukraine-founded startup People.ai becomes ‘unicorn’ with $1.1 billion valuation

Ukrainian startup People.ai has attracted $100 million of investment, bringing its total valuation to $1.1 billion, its founder Oleg Rogynsky said on Aug. 11.

With this valuation, People.ai joins the club of the so-called ‘unicorns,’ expensive startups valued at over $1 billion. This list also includes companies like Grammarly, GitLab, BitFury and Revolut — all with Ukrainian founders.

People.ai has developed a program that analyses how sales specialists work and helps them to forecast sales, close deals and find new clients more effectively. Among the company’s clients are big names like Zoom and Lyft.

Mubadala Investment, a state-owned investment fund based in the UAE, and Akkadian Ventures, a venture capital investment firm from San Francisco, backed the funding. The startup’s existing investors — the U.S. ICONIQ Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners — also participated in the recent round of financing. None of them disclosed the exact shares of investments.

With this money, People.ai wants to continue its growth and expansion in new markets. Over the last year, People.ai increased the number of its clients by 260%. The company’s annual revenue is estimated at “tens of millions of dollars,” according to Roginsky. He said that People.ai is not profitable yet.

Roginsky revealed to Forbes that the company’s strategic goal is to go public. “We were looking for investors with the greatest access to money, so that after the initial public offering (IPO) they could buy our shares, maintaining the market price,” he said.

After the recent investment round, Forbes estimated Roginsky’s fortune at $440 million, twice more than $210 million in shares he owned before. Now Roginsky is in the list of the 25 richest Ukrainians — he is the third Ukrainian techie ever who entered the list.

Roginsky’s company, which now employs over 240 people, is based in California; 40 tech specialists work from the office in Kyiv.

People.ai is so popular among businesses and investors because it helps to increase their revenue, Roginsky said.

The company’s algorithms analyze data from employees’ calendars, phone calls and online meetings and suggest how to make smart decisions in the future. For example, after analyzing the salesperson’s phone calls, People.ai determines the best number of clients for one sales specialist to cover.

Experts said that algorithms like the one developed by People.ai will become more popular in the future. Over 80% of big businesses will use them by 2024, up from 70% in 2018.

People.ai’s investor Abdulla AlBanna from Mubadala Investment told Bloomberg that although People.AI stands out in a crowded marketplace for sales software, “there are going to be multiple winners” because the market opportunity is significant.

“At the end of the day, every company is in business to drive revenue,” said Mike Dinsdale, a managing director at Akkadian Ventures.