ThoughtSpot Unveils AI-Based Analytics SpotIQ, Powered by New $60 Million Investment

By Sudipto Ghosh On Aug 18, 2017

Thoughtspot Launches SpotIQ To Put The Power Of 1,000 Analysts In Every Business Person’s Hands

ThoughtSpot, a leader in search-driven analytics for enterprise, has announced that it secured a fresh investment of $60 million. The latest funding brings its total capital raised to more than $160 million. ThoughtSpot has affirmed that it would use the capital to accelerate research and development for its AI-driven analytics platform, expand globally into Asia Pacific, and hire industry-focused customer success experts to nurture and grow key accounts. Leading analyst firm, Gartner Inc. had recognized ThoughtSpot on its 2017 Magic Quadrant for BI & Analytics Platforms in February 2017.

Latest Funding Follows Phenomenal Year of Growth and Customer Acquisition

In the past year, ThoughtSpot has achieved 270% customer growth with a significant percentage coming from the Fortune 500. Customers include Amway, Bed Bath and Beyond, Capital One, Celebrity Cruises, Chevron Federal Credit Union, DeBeers, Scotiabank and numerous other Fortune 500 customers. ThoughtSpot customers have now executed more than three million searches on the platform.

All of ThoughtSpot’s existing investors, led by LightSpeed Ventures (LSVP), participated in the new funding round and were joined by Capital One Growth Ventures, as both a new investor and a new customer.

ThoughtSpot Claims Working with Corporate Data to Get Easier

Ajeet Singh, Co-founder and CEO of ThoughtSpot, said, “One-by-one, enterprises are falling in love with ThoughtSpot. That’s because we make it effortless for non-technical business people to gain valuable insights from corporate data in seconds. 10% easier is not interesting to us. We’re making it 10,000% easier. Our mission is to deliver data insights at human-scale and SpotIQ is a massive leap forward. It puts the power of a thousand data analysts in the hands of every business person.”

At the time of this announcement, Jaidev Shergill, Managing Partner of Capital One Growth Ventures, said, “Data intelligence drives our decision-making and allows us to consistently deliver intuitive customer experiences. With ThoughtSpot’s Relationship Search technology and SpotIQ, even non-technical teams can now quickly access and analyze data using simple language. We look forward to playing a role in its continued growth and evolution.”

ThoughtSpot Driven to Scale Analytics Market by 2020

The previously undisclosed investment round closed in January 2017, six months after ThoughtSpot’s $60 million series C funding that closed in July 2016. Investors seized on the opportunity to invest again after seeing the accelerated growth of Fortune 500 customers and the massive market potential for AI-driven analytics.

Co-founded in 2012 by its CEO Ajeet Singh and six other co-founders from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Oracle, ThoughtSpot’s mission is to enable analytics at “human scale” and put search-driven analytics in the hands of 20 million users by 2020.

SpotIQ Equals Work Done by 10,000 Analysts or 40,000 Man-Hours

ThoughtSpot’s next-generation analytics platform uses AI at its core to power its Relational Search solution. SpotIQ is an AI-driven solution built on the platform to leverage ThoughtSpot’s massively scalable high-performance computing backend.

SpotIQ works with Relational Search hand-in-hand to curate deep and relevant insights for users that they may not have thought to look for on their own. With a single click, SpotIQ can automatically ask thousands of questions about billions of data points and bring back dozens of insights in seconds. The equivalent would be hiring a thousand analysts, knowing exactly what questions you want them to answer, and then waiting a week for them to come back with reports and dashboards.

Sathish Koteshwar, VP of Business Intelligence at TrueBlue, said, “We are always trying to identify the factors that have the biggest impact on our business. It can feel like trying to find a needle in the haystack, given the amount of data we have to sift through. SpotIQ accelerates the process by automatically uncovering insights into what’s causing shifts in our business results, which allows us to be nimble in our decision making.”

Using the power of AI, SpotIQ accomplishes in a single click what could take 40,000 man hours. SpotIQ will be included in the ThoughtSpot platform for no additional charge and will be generally available on September 30, 2017.

SpotIQ Brings Transparency in AI Deployment and Processes for Businesses

In an interview with CIO Magazine, Bruce Lee, Head of Operations and Technology at Fannie Mae underscored the importance of SpotIQ’s transparent AI processes. He commented: “AI in things like credit decisions is fraught with a lot of regulatory hurdles to clear. So a lot of what we do has to be thoroughly back-tested to make sure that we’re not introducing bias that’s inappropriate and that it is a net benefit to the housing infrastructure. The AI has to be particularly explainable.”