兔子先生传媒

San Francisco-based closed an 鈥渙pportunistic鈥� $230 million Series D, pushing the valuation of the cloud-based contact center company to more than $10 billion.

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The round came from new investors , and , as well as from existing investors , , , and . Founded in 2011, the company has now raised $498 million in total funding.

In addition to the new cash infusion, the company also named industry veteran as its first chief financial officer. Carey joins Talkdesk from , where she led the organization through an initial public offering.

, founder and chief executive officer, said the company was not looking to raise capital, and in fact still had a majority of the $143 million Series C it raised last July.

However, investors showed a strong interest in investing and reached out to Talkdesk, he said.

鈥淭here was just a lot of inbound interest,鈥� said Paiva, adding the new round more than tripled Talkdesk鈥檚 Series C valuation. 鈥淭his was an opportunistic round.鈥�

Contact centers and the cloud

Paiva attributes some of the interest in Talkdesk to both the general movement of many enterprise segments 鈥� including human resources, customer relationship management and now contact centers 鈥� to the cloud, as well as the growing services contact centers must provide to encompass all forms of communication.

鈥淭he world has changed from an expectation perspective,鈥� he said.

The contact centers space is large and includes other established companies such as , , and others. Nevertheless, Talkdesk鈥檚 technology and cloud-based platform help differentiate itself in the market, Paiva added. The company works with more than 1,800 customers, many of which are enterprises.

鈥漈here is still a lot of space for the company to grow and enhance its market share,鈥� said , co-founder at TI Platform Management. 鈥淒espite the fact that the industry is heavily crowded, with over 100 competitors and at least 10 new startups launching every year, Talkdesk remains a dominant player and one of the go-to software for businesses.鈥�

While the appointment of Carey will get people buzzing about an IPO for the 2,000-person company, Paiva would not commit to such an exit for the company.

鈥淲e are not stating we are going public,鈥� he said with a laugh.

However, investors are bullish on the idea.

鈥淲e anticipate that the company will IPO and we are very bullish about Tiago and Talkdesk,鈥� said Trang Nguyen, also a co-founder at TI Platform Management. 鈥淚f you identify or early on, you want to hold this for a long-term. Just like Apple or , we would want to hold Talkdesk in the public market for (the) long-term when the company goes public.鈥�

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