Software start-up Airtable hits $11 billion valuation in latest funding, adds Salesforce, Michael Dell as investors

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Airtable said Monday it raised $735 million in a Series F funding round that values the enterprise software company at $11 billion — nearly double its valuation from earlier this year. The San Francisco-based company, ranked No. 46 on this year’s CNBC Disruptor 50 list, has now raised nearly $1.4 billion to date.

Its latest funding round is being led by New York City-based hedge fund XN, and it includes new investors Franklin Templeton, Salesforce Ventures and Michael Dell’s MSD Capital, among others. Existing investors including Benchmark, Coatue, D1 Capital Partners and Thrive Capital also participated in the round.

Airtable was co-founded by Howie Liu, who sold his other start-up — enterprise software company Etacts — to Salesforce in 2011. As Airtable’s CEO, Liu’s mission is to make the complex world of software more user friendly. Up until companies like Airtable started creating low-code and no-code software, it wasn’t really accessible to most people. Now with no coding background required, workers can build apps and workflows.

“This round really gives us financial freedom as a company. We’re going to be able to go and execute on the long-term opportunity of the space,” Liu said Monday on CNBC’s “TechCheck.”

“This bridges us to profitability and allows us to time an IPO at the time that’s ideal for us as a company,” he said.

The fast-growing code-for-everyone-else approach allows professionals who aren’t fluent in coding languages such as Java or Python, and don’t have their desk buried deep within the stack, to play a part in rethinking and remaking the consumer and client digital experience.

The low-code movement has attracted an even higher level of attention as a result of the pandemic, during which organizations from hospitals to government entities and corporations have had to develop online offerings at a faster pace than ever expected and for new use cases.

Airtable clients include Netflix and Shopify, as well as more than 300,000 companies, including a good portion of the Fortune 500.

“We think this is a huge category. Almost every single knowledge worker could be a customer of Airtable in the future,” Liu said. “We’re seeing a lot of expansion from our existing accounts … We think we have a really strong story about how we can win this space.”

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