Search as a Service Provider Algolia Raises $110M

At work, we are using an increasingly large number of applications (over 80 on average) and with this great proliferation comes great frustration. We often forget (at least I do!) where to find a particular file, who we sent a message to, and more. 

Since we can’t call the Ghostbusters to solve this quandary, two superhero trends are leading the charge to help us make sense and meaning out of the madness, giving us the tools we need to find what we are looking for.

Team collaboration software: Tools that facilitate communication between team members, allowing you to quickly track down the content they’re looking for.

Enterprise search software (search as a service): software that allows for the organized retrieval of stored business data within an organization so that users can securely enter and find data across enterprise databases.

Search as a service: Have your data, and find it too

Last week, we saw the market’s recognition of the importance of the latter with Algolia’s large  Series C round (led by Accel), to the tune of $110 million. 

Algolia (a leader in the Enterprise Search category on G2), a hosted search platform, will use the funds to further global expansion and support R&D. You’ve probably witnessed Algolia in action without realizing it: Each time you search Slack, you can thank Algolia for the search results.

Following on from our discussion of the build-or-buy question, Algolia (along with a host of other enterprise search tools) allows the likes of app developers and website builders to easily build intelligent, intuitive search capabilities without the need for an in-house team. This means they will be able to spend less time and money searching for top talent and more time honing their search capabilities.