Retool Raises $45M Series C2 to Change How Software Is Built

Existing Investors Sequoia Capital, John and Patrick Collison, Nat Friedman, Elad Gil, Daniel Gross and Caryn Marooney participated in the round that values Retool at $3.2B

Retool, an application development platform for internal tools, announced it has raised $45 million in Series C2 funding at a $3.2B valuation from existing investors Sequoia Capital, Stripe co-founders John and Patrick Collison, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, Elad Gil, Daniel Gross, and Caryn Marooney.

The San Francisco-based company raised $20 million in Series C funding in December 2021, opting for a smaller round. As Retool Co-founder and CEO David Hsu explained, the company chose to optimize its funding strategy for the benefit of its employees and the long-term health of the company, rather than the optics of the highest valuation.

“Instead of chasing large valuations, we remain focused on expanding our team and delivering value to our customers and developers,” remarked Hsu. “In the last year alone, we’ve launched hundreds of new features and improvements, handled billions of queries across the Retool platform, and seen strong traction globally, including in Europe and APAC with customers like Checkout and CRED.”

Retool will primarily use its funds to invest more aggressively in headcount, new products and platform improvements, and international expansion. The company, which counts Amazon, NFL, NBCUniversal, and Pinterest among its customers, recently moved its headquarters into the historic Hamm’s Building in San Francisco, and is building out employee hubs in New York City, London, and Seattle.

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“Historically, internal tools have been seen as a luxury at best, and a distraction at worst—something you don’t want core engineers working on,” said Bryan Schreier, partner at Sequoia, “With Retool, the calculus changes; internal tools are 10x easier to build, and can help teams move faster and reimagine how they operate. In a time when many companies are tightening their belts, the right internal tools that empower teams to do more with less is a competitive advantage.”

Retool also announced today major updates to its free plan for developers, which now allows teams of up to five users to build unlimited apps. With this new free plan, startups, small teams, and solo developers can build unlimited apps using Retool’s 90+ pre-built components, 40+ data and API connections, and Retool’s app hosting service.

Retool’s new free plan features:

• Unlimited apps – Now startups and small teams of up to five users can build unlimited apps to solve their business needs and deploy them at no cost.
• The largest UI component library for internal tools – Retool offers 90+ components (such as forms, charts, and tables) that come with built-in validation, accessibility and more. Developers can drag and drop to build whatever interface they need and don’t need to waste time building from scratch.
• Connect apps to any database or API – Retool connects to nearly anything with a REST or GraphQL API, and has built durable integrations for popular datastores, like PostgreSQL or MongoDB.
• Save, share, and reuse queries – With Retool, developers can use and reuse everything—including the queries that power their apps. Retool offers a Query Library so the team can work from one place for all custom logic.
• Bring your own React components – Companies can add their own custom React components to fit their business needs.

“Broadening access to the Retool platform is a key step in our mission to change the way the world develops software,” said Hsu. “Internal tools are just the start.”

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