GWI, the leading audience insights company has raised over $180m in a Series B funding, thus valuing the company at over $850m. Financing was led by Permira’s growth fund.
Founded in 2009 by Chief Executive Officer, Tom Smith, GWI has become the leading global market research and audience insights software platform.
After receiving a $40m Series A funding from the New York-based growth fund Stripes in 2018, GWI has since tripled recurring revenue, reaching nearly 400 employees globally.
GWI’s global reach and industry impact
GWI facilitates delivering of global insights at scale, thus enabling the world’s top brands, agencies, and media organisations to gain deep understandings of their audiences.
GWI customers are facilitated so as to analyse harmonised data sets across geographies through an easy-to-use platform, thus gaining faster insights and time-to-market.
This investment will advance GWI’s SaaS platform, extending coverage and reach plus capturing more data points from more consumers worldwide, particularly from underserved markets and segments, and innovating in UX, machine learning, and natural language.
GWI will launch more products and bolster existing data sets.
Tom Smith, the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of GWI expounded further, saying, “Companies today need an instantaneous view of their audience everywhere in the world.”
“The traditional approach of market research is not fit for this purpose as it is too slow, incredibly expensive, and lacks the scale and detail needed. Our technology has solved this problem and the result has been incredible growth over the last three years.”
“We will work with Permira to put audience insights in the workflow of professionals.” GWI joins Carta, FullStory, G2, Klarna and Sysdig, among others, as a Permira portfolio company.
Permira inspired by GWI’s market reach
Alex Melamud, Principal at Permira expounded further. “Understanding the digital consumer will continue to be increasingly important to brands, agencies, and media companies who focus on engaging and acquiring customers through leveraging digital channels.”
“Competing in the marketplace needs instant audience insights and with GWI’s modern platform and globally harmonised data sets provides a solution to any data storyteller.”
“We are therefore looking forward to leveraging our global platform in order to support GWI’s continued growth and expansion across various international markets.”
Ron Shah, a Partner at Stripes said, “GWI’s exceptional products should be in the hands of every professional who wants to better understand their customers and make smarter, data-driven decisions, and this milestone is a powerful step forward for the company.”
“Since investment in 2018, Tom and the GWI team have made great strides to deliver a transformative and superior product and we believe they’re just getting started.”
“We’re thrilled to have Permira join us in this journey to make GWI’s ambitions a reality.”
GWI was supported by Jefferies and Permira was advised by Moelis & Company.
