Sheryl Sandberg’s Fund Backs Pigment, a Microsoft Excel Rival, in $145 Million Round

Mark Bergen, Bloomberg News

Sheryl Sandberg and Tom Bernthal. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- French software startup Pigment SAS is said to be the country’s newest unicorn after raising $145 million in venture capital, 10 months after its last financing.

The round mostly comprised Pigment’s existing investors, co-Chief Executive Officer Eléonore Crespo said in an interview. The only new entrant was Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners, the fund from former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg and her husband Tom Bernthal.

“There’s a cohort of Silicon Valley investors that are following us quite closely,” said Crespo. The company has raised $393 million to date, and the new round values Pigment above $1 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. Crespo declined to share a valuation.

While startups primarily focused on generative artificial intelligence have grabbed the spotlight in France, Pigment’s round signals evergreen investor interest in a reliable way of making money — selling software subscriptions to businesses.

The five-year-old startup sells planning and forecasting software mostly to finance departments. It has added products for human resources and supply-chain management, as well as a feature deploying large-language models.

The company likens its offering to a sleeker, savvier version of Microsoft Excel. But Crespo also said she’s competing directly with Anaplan Inc., a software company acquired by private equity outfit Thoma Bravo for $10.4 billion in 2022, and enterprise giants Oracle Corp. and SAP SE. Pigment announced it doubled its customer base in 2023, adding blue-chip clients like Unilever Plc and Merck KGaA. More than half the company’s revenue comes from North America, Crespo said, though she didn’t share figures.

With the latest funds, Crespo said Pigment plans to double its team of engineers, a group of about 100, to improve products and build new ones. The company plans to stay private “for as long as possible,” she said.

The investment was led by the venture capital arm of Iconiq Capital, a multifamily office that manages money for Mark Zuckerberg. Along with Sandberg’s fund, the round included earlier backers IVP, Greenoaks and Felix Capital.

Europe lags behind the US in venture dealmaking and exits, which are still sluggish globally, according to new data from research firm PitchBook. Investors put €16.4 billion ($17.7 billion) into European startups during the first quarter — an improvement from last year but down 53% from the first quarter of 2022.

Still, startup funding in the region is back to following the steady trends before “hype levels” of the pandemic years, according to Navina Rajan, a PitchBook senior analyst. “The correction has happened and deal value is holding up quite well,” she said. PitchBook estimates that enterprise software firms accounted for more than a third of the venture deals in Europe last year.

(Updates with total raised in third paragraph)