Cloud contact center Talkdesk raises $143 million at a $3 billion valuation

Talkdesk, a company that provides cloud-based contact center software for enterprises, has raised $143 million in a series C round of funding, taking the company’s valuation to more than $3 billion.

Founded out of Portugal in 2011, Talkdesk — which is now headquartered in San Francisco — is one of a number of companies striving to replace legacy contact center systems with an end-to-end cloud platform for accepting, managing, and routing customer service calls, with support for SMS, live chat, email, and social networks. It comes with additional tools and services, such as virtual customer service agents and analytics. Talkdesk claims a number of big-name clients, including IBM, Dropbox, and Peloton.

The cloud-based contact center market was valued at around $13 billion in 2019, a figure that is expected to reach roughly $50 billion by 2025. However, the market could be gearing up for even greater growth as more customer service teams work remotely due to the pandemic. This trend hasn’t been lost on investors — in the past two months alone, Talkdesk’s Paris-based rival Aircall raised $65 million, followed by Ujet, which locked down $55 million from Alphabet’s GV and other big names.

Prior to now, Talkdesk had raised around $125 million in funding. With a fresh $143 million — from investors including Franklin Templeton, Willoughby Capital, Skip Capital, and Lead Edge Capital — the company said it’s well-financed to capitalize on its recent momentum and expand globally while investing in R&D, sales, and marketing.