Swiss Firm Beekeeper Raises $50 Million

Beekeeper, the Zurich, Switzerland-based provider of a frontline success system, reported raising $50 million in Series C funding, bringing the company’s total funding to date to more than $100 million. New investors like EGS Beteiligungen and Kreos Capital joined the round, alongside existing investors Energize Ventures, Thayer, SwissCanto, Keen Ventures, Alpana Ventures, Edenred Capital, and Verve Capital.

The company plans to use the new capital infusion to spur growth, invest in product development, and establish its leadership in the frontline success category. Frontline success programs aim to improve the CX provided by a company’s frontline employees, which are the workers of a company that interact directly with customers and affect customer care and performance.

“The disconnect between employers and their frontline employees is at an all-time high, causing staff shortages and burnout that come at a hefty economic price,” says Dr. Cristian Grossmann, co-founder and CEO of Beekeeper. “This round of investment validates Beekeeper’s mission to tackle this disconnect and overcome the crippling status quo it creates.”

Juan Muldoon, a partner at Beekeeper investor Energize Ventures, says that with digitization scaling and transforming industries, there is increasing demand to enable new technologies for frontline workers, who make up 80% of the global deskless workforce.

Since its founding in 2020, Beekeeper has grown to include operations in 150 countries, and its staff has grown to more than 200 team members across the United States and Europe.

Alida Lands $60 Million Credit Facility

Canadian experience management solutions provider Alida has secured a $60 million syndicated credit facility from lead lender National Bank of Canada through its technology and innovation banking group. Co-lenders include BMO, Comerica, and Silicon Valley Bank.

The credit facility will support capital requirements for the company’s long-term growth trajectory and strategic initiatives as Toronto, Canada-based Alida continues on its global expansion plans, centered around providing customer, employee, product, and brand experiences, according to the company.

“The funding from National Bank reflects the confidence that has been instilled in our future business prospects, financial health, and our success as leaders in the customer experience (CX) industry,” says Ross Wainwright, CEO at Alida. “With this new financing agreement, Alida is well positioned to continue expanding our innovative product portfolio to meet the fast-evolving needs of our customers.”

Klaviyo Acquires Napkin.io

Klaviyo, the unified customer company with a platform for data-driven e-commerce marketing tools, has made its first acquisition, Napkin.io, the provider of serverless cloud solutions, underscoring Klaviyo’s commitment to the developer community. Financial terms of the deal were not immediately available.

Founded in January 2021 and headquartered in New York, Napkin.io provides developers with a secure way to write and deploy code directly from a browser. The code can then be set to run on a schedule or deployed as an endpoint for an application programming interface (API).

Earlier this year, Boston-based Klaviyo committed to expanding its platform to enable developers, customers, partners, and freelancers to build new experiences on top of Klaviyo. To this end, Klaviyo launched new software development kits (SDKs), a sample data tool to speed up Klaviyo onboarding, and a new developer portal for finding API documentation, guides, and developer-specific content.

The company’s new endpoints are more consistent and connected, while also enabling greater programmatic access to new product areas. For example, developers can use new Catalogs API to programmatically create, update, or delete catalog data in a customer’s account to send more personalized messages, ensuring accurate product information in Klaviyo. For the coming months and throughout 2023, Klaviyo plans to release new APIs on a continuing basis, exposing more of its user interface (UI) and enhancing the overall developer experience.