Seismic, the industry-leading sales enablement and marketing orchestration platform provider, and Permira, the global private equity firm, today announced Seismic has raised a Series F round of $92M led by a company backed by the Permira funds to accelerate Seismic’s rapid innovation, international growth, and M&A activity. Additional new strategic investors include Ameriprise Financial and EDBI. Existing investors participating in the round include Jackson Square Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and T. Rowe Price. This round brings the total raised by Seismic to approximately $270M to-date and values the company at approximately $1.6 billion.
In addition to its primary capital investment, the Permira funds have also made a significant secondary investment in Seismic, becoming Seismic’s single largest shareholder.
“We founded Seismic ten years ago to enable marketing and sales teams to engage with prospective customers with the right content at the right time – delivering tailored, personalized experiences at scale,” said Doug Winter, Seismic Co-Founder and CEO. “Permira’s investment in Seismic is a tremendous testament to Seismic’s market opportunity, team, and overall momentum. Permira’s experience investing in leading enterprise software companies will help us accelerate Seismic platform innovations, international expansion, and M&A efforts. We are also thrilled to have Ameriprise Financial, a valued Seismic customer, expand their relationship with us as a strategic investor. In addition, I’m excited to welcome EDBI, a leading global investment firm in Asia, to the Seismic family as we continue to expand our footprint in the Asia-Pacific region.”
Seismic has emerged as the clear sales enablement and marketing orchestration leader with revenues nearly four times its nearest competitor. During the first half of 2020, Seismic achieved a 148 percent increase in active users over the prior year period, driven in part by the world’s shift to digital and remote work. In addition, the company expanded its Seismic Storytelling Platform with the acquisition of Percolate in November 2019. Seismic has also driven international expansion, including opening offices in France, Germany, and Australia in the past year. With more than 600 enterprise customers worldwide, Seismic enjoys a best-in-class net retention rate of nearly 120 percent, indicative of the growing value it’s delivering its customers.
“Seismic is a pioneer in the sales enablement category, and a critical application supporting customers’ shift toward more effective selling using personalized content throughout the buyer journey. Across the Permira portfolio, our companies have turned to Seismic to improve sales effectiveness and efficiency,” said Ryan Lanpher, Partner of Permira. Andy Young, Principal of Permira, further noted, “We are very excited to partner with the Seismic team to accelerate the product roadmap, global expansion, and vertical market-focused growth opportunities, particularly in financial services.”
“When we led Seismic’s last round of financing, we became committed to Seismic’s vision and were especially struck by the deep enthusiasm of Seismic’s customers,” said John W. Thompson, Venture Partner at Lightspeed, Seismic Board Member, and Chairman, Board of Directors, Microsoft. “Seismic is playing an instrumental role in helping organizations enable their marketing and sales teams to engage with customers with highly relevant content to accelerate sales cycles. The company has been quite successful helping enable many of the world’s largest brands with highly distributed, global teams.”
Seismic has tremendous momentum. In addition to its rapid growth, Seismic has been named to the Forbes Cloud 100 in 2019 and 2020, Forbes’ America’s Best Startup Employers of 2020, Comparably Top Leadership Teams of 2020, and Inc. Magazine’s Best Workplaces of 2020, among other company and workplace awards. Seismic has been named a market leader across analyst reports, including The Forrester Wave™: Sales Content Solutions, Q3 2020, The Aragon Research Globe for Sales Enablement Platforms 2020, Research in Action’s Vendor Selection Matrix™ – Sales Engagement Management (SEM) SaaS and Software, and the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Content Marketing Platforms for its Percolate solution. Seismic was also recently named a leader for the seventh consecutive time in the G2 Grid® Report for Sales Enablement.
Founded in 2010 with headquarters in San Diego, Seismic now has more than 900 global employees across 14 offices.
The transaction closed earlier this month. J.P. Morgan served as financial advisor to Permira. BofA Securities served as financial advisor to Seismic.
About Seismic
Seismic is the industry-leading marketing and sales enablement solution, aligning go-to-market teams while empowering them to deliver engaging buyer experiences that drive growth. Seismic’s Storytelling PlatformTM delivers innovative capabilities for marketers to orchestrate content delivery across all channels, and for sellers to engage with prospective buyers in a compelling, resonant manner at every step of the buyer journey. More than 600 enterprises including IBM and American Express have made Seismic their sales enablement platform of choice. The Seismic Storytelling PlatformTM integrates with business-critical platforms including Microsoft, Salesforce, Google and Adobe. Seismic is headquartered in San Diego, with offices across North America, Europe, and Australia. To see how Seismic is being used by companies in your industry, visit seismic.com.
About Permira
Permira is a global investment firm. Founded in 1985, the firm advises funds with a total committed capital of approximately US$50bn (€44bn) to make long-term investments in companies with the objective of transforming their performance and driving sustainable growth. The Permira funds have made over 250 private equity investments in four key sectors: Technology, Consumer, Services, and Healthcare. Permira employs over 250 people in 14 offices across Europe, North America, and Asia.
