By Heather Somerville
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Silicon Valley technology company ThoughtSpot has completed a $120 million funding round to fuel the start-up's new artificial intelligence endeavor.
ThoughtSpot, based in Palo Alto, California, said on Thursday it had raised $60 million from investors in a financing round led by venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners. The investment round, completed in January but previously undisclosed, was an extension of a $60 million financing round ThoughtSpot completed a year ago and doubles the total amount raised.
Lightspeed was the first venture firm to back messaging company Snap.
ThoughtSpot makes data analytics software for businesses with a Google-like search tool that allows users to search for data. Users type a question into a search bar and ThoughtSpot produces charts, graphs and maps visualizing data such as sales numbers and customer demographics.
The company was co-founded in 2012 by Ajeet Singh, who started ThoughtSpot after helping to found Nutanix, a cloud computing company that held an initial public offering last year that raised more than $200 million.
ThoughtSpot's funding coincides with the company's debut of a new artificial intelligence product, SpotIQ. With this technology, a computer asks thousands of questions on its own, making assumptions about what the user wants to know based on the user's profile and certain search terms. The search produces dozens of analyzed data sets in seconds.
Singh, who is ThoughtSpot's chief executive officer, told Reuters the artificial intelligence enables businesses to get answers to questions they might not even know to ask. He added that the software is the equivalent of hiring a thousand analysts, asking them questions and then waiting a week for them to come back with reports - about 40,000 man hours of work.
The company's customers include retailers such as Bed Bath & Beyond (NASDAQ:BBBY) and financial firms, including Capital One. The recent financing brings its total funding to more than $160 million.