Friday Funding: Pigment Raises $88m To Take Down Excel

The Raise

A new startup called Pigment wants to become the go-to platform for generic data entry and business planning. The company is implicitly positioned against the industry’s reigning goliath, Microsoft Excel (MSFT).

This startup just raised a Series C funding round of $88 million, led by ICONIQ Growth. Other investors include Meritech, IVP, and FirstMark. While Pigment won’t disclose its valuation, management stated revenue grew 600% from 2021 to 2022.

Differentiating Factor

Like Excel, Pigment can be described as a generic workforce tool used to store, graph, and interpret data. It can help HR leaders track employee salaries, assist finance departments track corporate profit or loss, and enable sales teams to monitor commissions.

But it’s not all similarities. To overthrow the industry leader, Pigment plans on making its platform more connected and interactive. To start, it is built to integrate easily with most major business tools. These include enterprise resource planning tools, HR systems, and cloud data banks.

On top of that, Pigment is designed to be collaborative — its dashboards can be updated in real-time by different team members. And it inked a partnership with a tool in which Microsoft has invested heavily: OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Pigment intends to use the generative AI model to process natural language and answer requests.

The Modern Spreadsheet

Pigment has its work cut out for itself taking on Excel, which has been widely used since nearly the dawn of modern computers. But the timing could be just right for the scrappy upstart.

Thanks to advances in AI, and technology in general, modern workplace tools are getting increasingly more user-friendly. And companies like Pigment are committed to making life easier for the modern workforce.

So if the thought of opening an Excel spreadsheet makes you shudder, it might be time to try Pigment. The stereotypically beige world of business spreadsheets could use a splash of color.

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