Nextiva has raised $200 million in funding from Goldman Sachs Asset Management in its first external funding round, at a $2.7 billion valuation.

Nextiva will use the money to accelerate its innovation, go-to-market expansion and growth in global markets. The company’s first outside funding caps a year of growth with $250 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). It also logged continued product development.

The business communications provider plans to accelerate innovation for connected communications, including artificial intelligence (AI) and automation development.

Bringing Communications Together

Marc Stoll is Nextiva‘s president and COO.

Nextiva’s Marc Stoll

“The funding will help accelerate Nextiva’s vision for connected communications, which brings together communications, customer management, intelligence and automation into a single purpose-built solution,” he said. “With Nextiva, partners can help their customers do three things (better) to help businesses develop deeper relationships and optimize revenue.”

Those include bringing all communication together in one data stream, harvesting the content from customer conversations and turning it into usable insight, and providing tools and applications to deliver those insights directly to business users in real time, Stoll said.

“Everything is in one place,” he said. “This gives businesses the full set of tools to manage the customer journey. No one else is doing this. And this is something we think Nextiva partners will be excited about bringing to their customer base.”

Nextiva will continue its path of aggressive growth as a channel-first, connected communications provider, Stoll said.

“Nextiva is dedicated to helping businesses understand their customers, service them effectively and ensure their loyalty,” he said. “To do this, Nextiva will rely on its channel partners as a strategy for robust growth, supporting their needs with an increase in marketing programs, field sales participation and service.”

Bucking Industry View

The current industry views communication as “merely a utility,” just providing the connection between two parties or a group of people via voice, video and messaging, Stoll said.

“They are doing the same thing that all communications companies have done for 100 years — connecting parties,” he said. “Nextiva is bringing conversational intelligence to the forefront of native business applications to help businesses serve their customers better. We view communication as a gateway to customer understanding. The future of communications is to bring context to businesses and create connected experiences.”

Stephen Kerns is a vice president within Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

“As a native communications company, Nextiva is at the nexus of customer conversation and engagement,” he said. “They have built a market-leading business with an outstanding team. And we look forward to supporting Nextiva as they help companies discover the power of connected communications.”