Bloomreach Reaches $2.2 Billion Valuation Following $175 Million Investment from Goldman Sachs

Talk about a sonic "bloom."

Bloomreach, a leading content and search platform focused on commerce, just made some big noise by announcing a $175 million round of funding, skyrocketing the company's valuation to a whopping $2.2 billion.

The investment – which follows a massive $150 million funding round in January 2021 – was led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management ("Goldman Saalamogordochs"), with participation from existing Bloomreach investors Bain Capital Ventures and Sixth Street Growth. 

The size of these two infusions demonstrates some serious confidence from the street. With heavy-hitters like Goldman Sachs piling on the cash, it's clear that investors see continued opportunities in digital commerce transformation, particularly at the enterprise level. Bloomreach has made a series of smart investments along the way, giving them the heft to challenge one of the biggest e-commerce brands on the planet.

Arming brands against Amazon with personalized e-commerce

When it comes to e-commerce – or any commerce for that matter – it's impossible to ignore "The Amazon Effect."

In the 25 years since Jeff Bezos launched Amazon.com from a garage in suburban Seattle, it has grown to become the top e-commerce platform in the world. Each month, more than 197 million people around the globe visit Amazon.com. That's more than the entire population of Russia.

Worldwide e-commerce sales are expected to reach $7.4 trillion by 2025. According to IBM's U.S. Retail Index data, COVID-19 has accelerated retail trends by nearly five years. E-commerce sales were skyrocketing before the pandemic, and Amazon was already monopolizing most of the air in the digital room. As contactless delivery became essential during COVID lockdowns, Amazon moved into its pole position as the uncontested leader in digital customer experiences. 

Amazon's grasp over the e-commerce world is viewed as an existential threat to many global brands. Even giants like Walmart, Apple, and Macy’s are struggling to compete with the digital heavyweight. But according to Bloomreach, brands now have a weapon to fight Amazon – giving retailers, distributors, and manufacturers a platform for delivering highly relevant and personalized digital experiences with speed and scalability.

Moving away from monolithic

According to Raj De Datta, CEO of Bloomreach, the key to competing is the move from monolithic e-commerce platforms to microservices-based architectures that empower not just the web, but all digital touchpoints. That way, enterprises can have more control over the customer experience by making it highly personalized and innovating quickly.

"It starts in the early days of the web, with Amazon and eBay, when e-commerce was in its infancy. Twenty years later, e-commerce is exactly where we would expect a 20-year-old to be — just getting started," said De Datta. "Indeed, at Bloomreach, we believe that if the first 20 years of e-commerce have been about standing up the store or simply transacting online, then the next twenty years are about standing out from the crowd, or differentiating in the face of increased digital competition and rising consumer expectation. "

Growing its Commerce Experience Cloud

Following its latest round of funding, Bloomreach plans to invest in the development of cutting-edge personalization use cases powered by its entire Commerce Experience Cloud, showcasing the differentiated power of its combined product suite. In addition, Bloomreach will invest in expanding its go-to-market teams to accelerate business growth worldwide.

Currently, Bloomreach's DXP for Commerce helps keep customers engaged, increases revenue per visit, and drives customer loyalty. The company says that the solution integrates with leading commerce platforms to form a complete e-commerce solution. Bloomreach further enhances its commerce offerings with AI-powered search, intelligent merchandising, and highly agile content management, which are fast becoming essential tools for shaping modern e-commerce experiences. 

Additionally, Bloomreach Experience (brX) currently drives over $200 billion in digital commerce experiences across many of the world's largest online retailers, brands, distributors, and B2B manufacturers – representing 25% of retail e-commerce in the U.S. and U.K. With Bloomreach Experience, organizations can access rich features, all powered by an API-first headless architecture. This makes it easier for brands to connect Bloomreach with their existing commerce platform and frontend technologies and avoid many of the rigors of re-platforming everything.

In 2021, Bloomreach acquired Exponea, a Customer Data and Experience Platform (CDXP), with the goal of integrating its market-leading e-commerce capabilities with Exponea's best-in-class customer data (CDP) and marketing automation capabilities. With this combination, Bloomreach appears well-poised to accelerate the creation, personalization, and optimization of powerful commerce experiences.

About Bloomreach

Bloomreach is the world’s #1 Commerce Experience Cloud, empowering brands to deliver customer journeys so personalized, they feel like magic. It offers a suite of products that drive true personalization and digital commerce growth, including: Discovery, offering AI-driven search and merchandising; Content, offering a headless CMS; and Engagement, offering a leading CDP and marketing automation solutions. Together, these solutions combine the power of unified customer and product data with the speed and scale of AI-optimization, enabling revenue-driving digital commerce experiences that convert on any channel and every journey. Bloomreach serves over 850 global brands including Albertsons, Bosch, Puma, FC Bayern München, and Marks & Spencer. For more information, visit Bloomreach.com.