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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowSan Francisco-based Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories Inc. has landed an eye-popping $580 million in outside funding, though it’s not yet clear what impact this might have on the company’s substantial Indianapolis operations.
Genesys, which offers cloud-based software, artificial-intelligence technology and other products for call centers, has more than 5,700 total employees and serves customers in more than 100 countries. The company acquired Indianapolis-based Interactive Intelligence Group Inc. in 2016.
The oversubscribed round of funding—which means the company earned more investment than it was seeking—was led by Salesforce Ventures, with participation from ServiceNow Ventures, Zoom Video Communications, and funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, D1 Capital Partners and another unnamed West Coast mutual fund manager, Genesys announced this week.
The offering values Genesys at $21 billion.
“We believe this fundraise, including raising from leading strategic investors, validates the achievements we have made to date and will accelerate our continuing efforts to expand and realize the vast “experience as a service” market opportunity ahead,” Genesys Chairman and CEO Tony Bates said in a prepared statement.
Genesys did not respond to an IBJ query about how the investment might affect the company’s Indianapolis operations or how many local employees the company currently has in the city.
Interactive Intelligence had 970 local employees when it was acquired by Genesys. By May 2019 that number had dropped to 800, putting it out of compliance with a 2014 city of Indianapolis incentives agreement that Genesys inherited when it acquired Interactive Intelligence. In response, Genesys told the city it would agree to maintain at least 800 local jobs through at least the end of 2022.
In October, Bloomberg reported that Genesys’ owners—the private equity firms Permira and Hellman and Friedman—were contemplating an initial public offering that could take place in the first half of 2022. But the firms hadn’t made a decision yet about whether to take Genesys public or to keep it as a privately-held company, the Bloomberg story said.
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