Rokt, an e-commerce marketing startup based here in New York, announced Thursday it has raised a whopping $325 million in fresh Series E funding. Led by the legendary Tiger Global, this round brings Rokt’s total valuation to $1.95 billion — more than quadruple what it was when the startup closed its $80 million Series D last year.
Now, the newly minted unicorn says it will use this fresh injection of capital to fuel its international expansion, invest in R&D and make more strategic acquisitions. It also appears to be in the midst of a hiring spree, with more than 60 open tech positions available now.
Founded in 2012, Rokt works to help e-commerce companies reach their customers with personalized marketing. By using artificial intelligence and machine learning, the platform can analyze customer behavior and identify relevant patterns for each shopper, which it can then use to determine how and when to reach out to them, and with what message. The goal is to facilitate more fruitful interactions between businesses and their customers.
“Customers are demanding a more relevant e-commerce experience and businesses need to ensure they have the right economics to be able to grow,” Rokt CEO Bruce Buchanan explained in a statement. “Our technology solves these two problems by optimising every element of the transaction moment, both for relevancy and value for each individual customer, enabling digital businesses to remove irrelevant clutter and double their profitability.”
This funding round is coming at a particularly important time for the larger advertising, marketing and e-commerce ecosystem, which has fed the success of startups similar to Rokt. Just last month, Permutive and OpenWeb both pulled in big investments themselves from the likes of SoftBank and Insight Partners, respectively. OpenWeb also hit a unicorn valuation, with CEO Nadav Shoval claiming this is “only the beginning.”
The recent growth of Rokt and other startups like it has been accelerated by not just the surge in e-commerce, but also the recent privacy changes enacted by companies like Apple and Google, which restrict how users can be tracked. Since businesses that partner with Rokt can use their own first-party data to deliver personalized ads, they are turning to the startup in droves to improve engagement and increase revenue.
Today, Rokt claims to have more than 3,000 customers globally, including industry giants like Live Nation, Wayfair and Ticketmaster. And Griffin Schroeder, a partner at Tiger Global, seems to think there’s a lot more room for growth.
“Rokt has unlocked a new digital advertising opportunity for the online ecosystem — the transaction moment. And they are scratching the surface of what is possible at this moment,” Schroeder said in a statement. “Rokt’s exceptional management team has the vision and the capability to continue accelerating growth and providing unique solutions for their clients.”
Buchanan also told the Wall Street Journal that this Series E will be used to prepare Rokt for an initial public offering in 2023, following in the footsteps of Taboola, Viant, DoubleVerify and the slew of other marketing tech companies that made their public debuts this year.
