According to a Market Research Future report, the global procurement software market is projected to grow at 10% CAGR to $10 billion by the year 2023. The integration of AI capabilities with procurement software is expected to help bring on significant developmental opportunities into the procurement software market.

Globality’s Offerings

Menlo Park- based Globality was set up in 2005 by serial entrepreneurs Joel Hyatt and Lior Delgo with a vision of creating a level playing field for all service providers. They wanted to enable businesses to provide their services to other businesses irrespective of size or location, based solely on their proven performance, expertise, and capabilities.

Globality’s AI platform helps companies source external service providers in various industries including marketing, consulting, legal, IT, and HR. It offers a dynamic exchange between the client and the its AIbot Glo. Glo uses natural language processing capabilities to create and analyze the client’s requirements and expected scope from the service. It accesses a database of over 17,000 potential providers or 600,000 professionals in 100 countries. The platform analyzes millions of data points from a provider’s location, culture and work history, to the expertise of staff members to find the best suited service provider that fits within the client’s budget.

Its user-friendly platform allows businesses to easily compare the best potential vendors. Glo doesn’t stop at building the match. It also takes feedback from the client on the vendor’s work to determine how well the provider is performing. Using an AI-based approach instead of a traditional RFP-based approach, the businesses are able to save significant time and money that would have otherwise been spent in vendor selection. Globality claims that its service is able to offer businesses a savings of at least 20%.

Globality’s Financials

Globality is privately held and does not disclose its financials. It has raised $172 million in funding so far from investors including SoftBank Vision Fund, Raine Ventures, Dennis Nally, Al Gore, John Danilovich, John R. Joyce, THK Equities, Gordon Rubenstein, Ron Johnson, and SoftBank. Its last round of funding was held in January this year when it raised $100 million in a round led by SoftBank at a valuation of over $1 billion. Globality plans to use these funds to expand its market reach. Investors believe that professional services are a multi-billion dollar market, but sourcing for these services remains a highly “cumbersome manual process.” Globality is helping automate and simplify this process.

There are several other smaller players in the space, such as Agency Spotter, Shortlist, and Clutch. Some of these are niche players like Agency Spotter that offers businesses the ability to find and work with creative agencies, design firms, and marketing service providers. Others like Clutch offer a wider scope of services. But Globality claims to be the first smart sourcing platform that has managed to successfully leverage AI and natural language processing capabilities in the field to become an AI Unicorn.