AI-powered writing assistant now valued at $13B
You should have listened to your teacher. Grammar IS important. As a matter of fact, it can turn you into a billionaire.
A $200 million investment round announced by the popular grammar checker Grammarly not only catapulted the company’s value to $13 billion, but turned two of its founders, Max Lytvyn and Alex Schevchenko, into billionaires. The Ukrainian-born entrepreneurs who launched the automated typing assistant in 2009 are now worth at least $4 billion each. Baillie Gifford led the round with participation from funds and accounts managed by BlackRock.
“We believe this funding round is a great validation of our business strength,” Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, Grammarly’s global head of product, told in an interview. “We’ve been cash flow positive from the very early days. The round also validates the strength of our mission to improve lives through improving communication. This funding round comes in the context of product innovation and product scaling.”
Grammarly uses natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) to help users identify and rectify mistakes in their writing such as in text messages, emails and official documents. Its writing assistant software has more than 30 million daily users across the world and Grammarly said it delivers more than 100 billion writing suggestions each month.
Grammarly’s features include real-time contextual grammatical error correction, checking for consistency, and encouraging inclusive language practices for the LGBTQ+ community. It also offers a business version for large teams, with clients such as Zoom, Cisco and Expedia.
“Increased global connectivity is bringing new challenges and opportunities to our personal connections and professional successes,” comments Brad Hoover, CEO of Grammarly. “With our remote-first reality here to stay, effective communication is more critical than ever. That’s where Grammarly comes in.”
As enterprises increasingly embrace digitization, the AI writing assistant market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 27.6% from 2018 to 2028. According to a survey from John Snow Labs and Gradient Flow, 60% of tech leaders indicated that their budgets for natural language processing — which encompasses technologies like Grammarly’s — grew by at least 10% compared to 2020, while a third said that their spending climbed by more than 30%.
As digital transformations accelerated during the pandemic, a larger share of companies are expected to adopt AI technologies that automatically recommend and tailor copy, particularly in marketing.
“A significant portion of our portfolio consists of AI companies,” says Kris Bort, founding partner of Sakal Ventures, a fund that focuses on private market investing. “Artificial intelligence is becoming more ubiquitous in society. This means more people, regardless of technical expertise or mathematical background, need access to it. And beyond simply having access, AI must be easy, fast and cost effective to use.”
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