Akeneo's founding team. Image: Akeneo
With fresh funding, Akeneo plans to hire 100 new staff members to support its next round of rapid growth.
On Thursday (12 September), open source SaaS platform Akeneo announced that it has raised €41m in its Series C round.
The funding was led by global growth equity investor Summit Partners. There was also participation from existing investors Alven, Partech and Salesforce Ventures, as well as Akeneo board member Stephen Dietrich.
The Boston-headquartered start-up, which was founded in September 2012, provides a comprehensive solution to manage product information and omnichannel catalogues.
Akeneo said: “In the era of experience-driven commerce, both B2C and B2B brands and retailers are increasingly relying upon the power of unified product information to deliver compelling and relevant customer experiences across all sales channels.”
The company has achieved compound triple-digit revenue growth for the six consecutive years, and now serves brands such as Sephora, Fossil and Staples CA.
Steffan Peyer, principal at Summit Partners who plans to join the Akeneo board of directors, said that this type of platform “represents the next evolution of product information management”.
“We believe Akeneo’s highly-focused product approach, as well as its hyper-connectivity with the broader commerce stack, makes it uniquely capable of addressing complex and specific customer product information needs.”
Expansion plans
With the new funding, Akeneo intends to continue investing in sales and marketing efforts in the US, as well as increased research and development. This R&D will focus on product data intelligence to boost product information automation and monitor product experience quality.
Additionally, the company will hire more than 100 new staff members to support its next round of rapid growth. At present, it has 180 employees spread across offices in Boston, France, Germany, the UK, Spain and Israel.
Fred de Gombert, CEO and co-founder of Akeneo, said: “PXM [product experience management] is becoming a critical business application for brands and distributors to win in omnichannel retail.
“Today’s consumers average more than five touchpoints before they make a purchasing decision, so it is increasingly important for brands to use a platform that delivers an integrated and consistent product experience.
“With Summit’s extensive experience scaling global SaaS businesses and our existing investors’ continued support, we look forward to helping more brands and retail merchants deliver seamless product experiences with even greater efficiency and scale.”
Prior to closing its latest funding round, Akeneo hit a number of corporate milestones. These include the acquisition of AI start-up Sigmento, integration with Salesforce Commerce Cloud and a strategic technology partnership with Magento.
