Startups on the rise: Airtable with an $11.5 billion valuation

Teams and organisations have always utilised modern applications to make their workflow efficient. Slack, Microsoft Teams, Smartsheet, Smart Bridgit, Todoist, Asana, Liquid Planner, Podio, and Trello are famous names. Startup company Airtable is pretty new to this game but scored $735 in Series F Funding.

Airtable lets apps connect, of which teams can modernise the business process. A few years back, this term would raise eyebrows, but today, it is one of the ordinary and essential features team can use. All can be handled through these apps for remote work, keeping a schedule, efficient team management, and workflow destitution. Airtable does it a bit different.

After the initial funding, the company evaluates at a whopping $11.5 billion, which is one of the largest numbers for startups. The rarefied club of companies reaching more than $10 billion is a milestone achieved by the most successful ones, which Airtable is now.

The company is gradually working to improve infrastructure regarding team managing and backend. Airtable has Salesforce integration in the backend allowing companies to open non-US offices from London. These kinds of facilities are an industry first and quite innovative.

The funding will initially help the company to expand business in Europe. Workplace application needs constant security monitoring and updates with the latest tools. However, the initial version of the software is free to use; 30 per cent of its customers pay to use premium facilities. Premium subscription offers expansion, updated facilities, storage capability and much more. Howie Liu, Airtable Chief Executive Officer, said the "round brings us to profitability."

In a couple of years, the company will enter the public domain with stockholders in the mix. With 30 per cent paid customers, Airtable generates approximately $100 million each year; it’s an incredible number for a startup.

Airtable is a low-code platform, meaning non-technical workers can build their apps without code. Toolset includes finance and marketing in the Airtable forum.

With the $735 million additional funding, the total investment received by the company stands at $1.36 billion. It stays at an approximately $11 billion market quota with pre-money values.

Notable names such as Cole Haan, Medium, Expedia, Netflix, Time, Shopify come up in the company portfolio. The software has an easy-to-use interface with advanced features to help engage in complicated tasks.

The Series F funding round was led by an XN investment firm. Franklin Templeton, JP Morgan Growth Equity Partners, Salesforce Ventures, Michael Dell’s MSD Capital, T. Rowe Price Associates INC, and Silver Lake.

Benchmark, D1 Capital Partners, Greenoaks, ICONIQ Growth, Coatue, Caffeinated Capital, Thrive Capital were existing partners who contributed to the funding.

According to the report shared by Airtable, more than 80 per cent of Fortune 100 companies use their service actively. It includes big names such as Amazon, IBM, LVMH, Nike, Red Bull, Under Armour and a few already mentioned in the article.

The company has planned expansion of its workforce by at least four times within 2023. They will focus primarily on developing software applications outside of IT.

Low-code platforms are gaining lots of attention these days as large companies do not want to become software developing firms on their own. Still, they need the flexibility of creating their software version. Allowing these facilities has given team applications an upper hand.

2021 was purely focused on product innovation for the company, which later introduced Interface Designer. It is the first complete application building solution for enterprises. Fully interactive front-end expertise gave Airtable a push towards success compared to team apps from some of the largest tech firms in the world.

A niche-based solution is constantly remarkable than being slightly capable of doing everything. Airtable has the answer in mind and purely focuses on problem-solving for upcoming opportunities.

In March, investors put around $270 million in the company, valued at $5.8 billion in gain.