By Niket Nishant
(Reuters) – Visier Inc, the cloud-based workforce analytics company, said on Tuesday it had achieved a valuation exceeding $1 billion after raising $125 million in fresh capital in its latest funding round.
The round led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management, the investment services arm of Goldman Sachs, has made Visier the first unicorn company in the people analytics space, the Vancouver-based firm said.
“There is unprecedented demand for companies to better understand the people within their organizations,” Chief Executive Officer Ryan Wong said in a statement.
Founded in 2010, Visier pitches itself as a one-stop solution for HR queries. It processes over 12 million employee records in 75 countries, with customers including Uber Technologies Inc, Electronic Arts Inc and Adobe Inc.
Visier’s co-founder and Chairman John Schwarz views the partnership with Goldman Sachs as a trust vote for the people analytics market, which he says has become mainstream business practice.
The company said it will use the new capital to fund product development and international expansion.
“We have a relatively small physical presence in Europe, which we’d like to expand,” Schwarz told Reuters in an interview.
Though some of its mid-market customers went out of business due to the pandemic last year, Visier retained most of its enterprise customers and saw growth year-over-year, Schwarz said.
The company does not have any immediate plans to go public, he added.
The funding comes shortly after Visier reached the 8,000 customer-milestone. Its other investors include Sorenson Capital, Foundation Capital, Summit Partners, and Adams Street Partners.
The Goldman-led investment brings Visier’s total funding to $219.5 million, the company said. LionTree Advisors was the financial adviser to Visier.
(Reporting by Niket Nishant in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)