Company to accelerate its US market presence as spending on AI-powered sales solutions expected to grow 54% by 2022.

Cien Inc., a leading provider of AI-powered sales productivity solutions, today announced the completion of a seed round totaling $3.5M, $1.2M million of which was provided by Global Venture Capital firm Elaia, with follow on from the founders and private investors.

The new round of financing provides AI-for-Sales company Cien with additional resources to accelerate its market presence in the United States and Canada.

“The app pinpoints optimization opportunities and automatically tracks the financial impact of a sales team’s actions and decisions.”

In partnership with Salesforce.com, Cien helps B2B companies scale their sales teams with confidence by improving the effectiveness of their sales teams by applying artificial intelligence to their CRM data, without the need for building and hiring dedicated data-science teams.

Based in Dallas, TX, the company operates a Center of Excellence for data science and artificial intelligence out of Barcelona, Spain.

Cien’s plug and play software instantly builds a data model of a given sales team based on their CRM data and other data points. The app pinpoints optimization opportunities and automatically tracks the financial impact of a sales team’s actions and decisions.

Leaders can also use the advice to align sales and marketing teams and hold them accountable for results.  As of today, the app calculates over 100 million predictions per day and uncovers tens of millions of dollars in lost sales opportunities.

IDC expects AI-powered CRM activities to boost business revenue by $1.1 trillion by 2021 with spending on AI-powered sales solutions to double by 2022.

“It won’t be too long before AI becomes table-stakes for any sales organization.” – Rob Käll, Cien CEO and Co-founder

Sales process recommendation and automation solutions are expected to receive the lion share of expenditures with spending from enterprises to grow at a compounded annual rate of 54.1%.

“Analytics plays an increasingly important role in B2B sales.” says Rob Käll, Cien’s CEO and Co-founder. “Today the firms who are injecting AI into their sales process are doing it as a way of gaining an edge over their competition. However, it won’t be too long before AI becomes table-stakes for any sales organization.”

The investment in Cien marks Elaia’s latest investment in deep tech. Elaia has a proven track record with similar businesses such as Criteo, Mirakl and Sigfox.

“We were impressed by the fact that Cien’s business has built-in global distribution from day one.” – Xavier Lazarus, Partner at Elaia

Of the transaction, Xavier Lazarus, Partner at Elaia, who is joining Cien’s board of directors, said: “The timing for investing at an AI-first startup like Cien could not be better. We were particularly impressed by the founders’ track record of serial entrepreneurship and the fact that Cien’s business has built-in global distribution from day one.”

Rob Kall, Cien’s CEO and Co-founder said: “Elaia brings deep expertise and a network that will help Cien grow even faster.”

The original version of the press release is available on PRNewswire and Elaia.com.

About Cien
Cien gives companies the power of artificial intelligence to increase the productivity and effectiveness of their sales teams. Available on the Salesforce AppExchange, Cien’s app takes into account human and behavioral elements to detect problems, predict outcomes and recommend the shortest path to success.

About Elaia
Elaia is an independent Paris-based venture capital firm managing over €350m focused on digital & deep tech startups, from early stage to growth development. Elaia backs tech disruptors such as Criteo (IPO), Orchestra Networks (sold to Tibco), Sigfox, Teads (sold to Altice), Mirakl, tinyclues, Shift Technology. For more information visit www.elaia.com.