Telecommunications and internet group SoftBank’s Vision Fund has provided $100m of funding for Globality, the US-based operator of a marketplace for service providers, increasing its overall funding to $172m.
Founded in 2015, Globality runs an online marketplace that enables companies to find third-party service providers in areas such as marketing, IT, legal services, human resources and consulting, using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technology to reduce the time and costs associated with the process.
In addition to investing in its technology, Globality will also use the SoftBank funding to expand its engineering, product and client teams, and to scale its marketing and sales efforts. The round valued it at close to $1bn, a person familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal.
Jeffrey Housenbold, managing partner for SoftBank Investment Advisers, which runs Vision Fund, will join the company’s board of directors along with Ted Fike, an investor at SoftBank Investment Advisers.
Housenbold said: “Professional services represent a multi-trillion global market but procurement is mainly still a cumbersome manual process. Globality has spent several years in developing proprietary AI-enabled matchmaking capabilities to address these inefficiencies head on.
“Pioneering a two-sided, international marketplace creates benefits for both enterprise clients and service providers, and with it the potential for Globality to capture massive network effects as the platform continues to scale.”
Globality raised $35m in a late 2017 round that included boutique investment bank Raine Group and investment firm THK Equities as well as private investors Al Gore, John Joyce, John Danilovich and Dennis Nally.
The company had previously secured $27.2m in a 2016 series B round led by a consortium of private investors and family trusts, including several investors who had participated in its $10m series A round the year before.
The series A round featured commitments from 14 private investors including Al Gore, Ron Johnson, John Joyce, Michael Marks and Ken Goldman.