AI Unicorns: Analysis of Contentsquare’s Loris AI Acquisition

According to a recent report, the global web analytics market is estimated to grow 18% annually to reach $20 billion by 2032 from $5.4 billion in 2024. New York-based Contentsquare is a leading player in the market that is leveraging AI in the industry.

Contentsquare’s Offerings

Contentsquare was founded in 2012 by Jonathan Cherki as a student project. While studying at ESSEC business school in France, Jonathan saw that there was a gap between the digital experiences brands thought they were offering, and what consumers were actually getting. He wanted to set up a service that would improve how people experienced the web. He noted that businesses were not understanding how the customers behaved online, and they were thus not able to work on improving customer experience. Jonathan wanted to set up a company that would help brands gain insights into their customers’ needs and emotions during their online journeys.

Since being set up, Contentsquare has grown beyond a student project to a multi-billion-dollar unicorn that is using AI to improve web analytics for businesses. It has helped optimize over 1.3 million websites and boasts of names like Audi, Crunchbase, Asics, Sur La Table, and Orvis to name a few from its 3,700 customers.

Its core technology records user interactions online and uses algorithms to translate them to recommendations aimed at identifying areas for improving revenue and user experience. Its AI agent, Sense, runs detailed analyses to understand customer journeys, intent, and frustration. In a few minutes, it conducts a multi-step analysis and can answer complex questions that can help deliver results and walk organizations through the next steps needed to improve their user experience. Its solutions are focused on optimizing customer journeys, improving conversion, boosting A/B testing results, and increasing customer’s lifetime value.

Contentsquare’s Loris AI Acquisition

The company has grown inorganically as well. Earlier this year it announced the acquisition of a conversation intelligence platform Loris AI for an undisclosed sum. Tel-Aviv-based Loris AI provides a platform for customer experience (CX) teams that uses a combination of proprietary AI models, custom AI models, and LLMs to analyze customer service interactions across channels, such as email, chat, and phone calls. Its tools use the complete customer experience lifecycle to provide organizations with information needed to understand customer issues, monitor agent performance, and take action to improve. It helps brands turn support conversations into decisions.

Through the acquisition, Contentsquare plans to leverage Loris’s capabilities to add a new intelligence layer to its own digital analytics, thus strengthening web journeys with human and AI-powered insights. Prior to the acquisition, Loris AI was privately held and did not disclose either its funding or financial details.

Contentsquare’s Financials

Contentsquare operates on a tier-based pricing model based on the level of analytics that one chooses to buy. The company remains privately held and does not disclose financials. In 2022, they had commented that its annual recurring revenue was in the range of “several hundred million dollars”. It has raised $1.4 billion in funding from investors including Sixth Street, Highland Europe, BlackRock, Eurazeo, Canaan, and Soft Bank. Its last round of funding was held in 2022 when it raised $600 million at a valuation of $5.6 billion. More recent valuations are not disclosed.

Contentsquare is not the only player in the market though. There are others like FullStory and Quantum Metric that offer similar capabilities. Additionally, tech giants like Google and Adobe also offer similar services as part of their analytics engine. It would be interesting to see detailed financials and user metrics of companies like Contentsquare to understand the validity of their valuations.

Photo Credit: Pexels from Pixabay

This segment is a part in the series : AI Unicorns