Skift Take
Virtual event unicorn Hopin has announced a fresh investment of $450 million in Series D funding. Hopin has now raised more than $1 billion since February 2020. The company is now valued at a breathtaking $7.75 billion.
No, this is not groundhog day, although this story sure sounds familiar.
This latest Series D round of funding comes after raising $400 million in Series C funding in March, $125 million in Series B funding in November 2020, and $40 million in Series A funding in June 2020. The total amount impressively creeps just over $1 billion.
This round of funding has been co-led by new investors Arena Holdings and Altimeter Capital with participation from new investors Adams Street Partners, Untitled Investments and XN in addition to existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, DFJ Growth, General Catalyst, GIC, IVP, Northzone, Salesforce Ventures, Slack Fund, Temasek and Tiger Global.
The company shared that this round of funding is focused on the development of its multi-product technologies and building new product suites. Fittingly, Hopin has moved away from referring to itself as a virtual events platform, now using the term shared experiences platform.
Hopin Founder and CEO Johnny Boufarhat said: “We continue to uplevel with the priority to become accessible to all, and offer the optimal solution to seamlessly connect people to experiences for live events and beyond. Hopin plans to be wherever important conversations and connections happen. We are grateful for the ongoing support and confidence of our investors to actualize this.”
“The pandemic has forever changed how companies and communities interact and connect with their audiences and each other,” said Brad Gerstner, Founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital. “We are thrilled to partner with Johnny Boufarhat and the team on their journey to make the world more connected through Hopin’s platform.”
Hopin’s latest acquisitions reflect its desire to become the leading all-in-one event management platform. The recent acquisition of Attendify allows Hopin to enhance its event marketing suite to provide elevated, data-driven registration and engagement tools. The previous acquisition of Boomset added onsite capabilities such as kiosk and badges to power the company’s hybrid offerings. Also in 2021, Hopin acquired video hosting provider Streamable and video technology company jamm. In 2020, Hopin acquired StreamYard, adding StreamYard’s 3.6 million video content creators to its base, as well as event app provider Topi. More acquisitions could be on the horizon powered by this latest round of funding.
Since the beginning of 2020, Hopin has scaled from six to more than 800 employees in 47 countries and now has more than 100,000 organizations hosting events on its platform, as well as millions of attendees showing up for events each month. It’s also earned a respectable 79th placing on Fast Company’s 100 Best Workplaces for Innovators list.
We spoke with Hopin’s Founder and CEO Johnny Boufarhat back in November 2020, when he shared his thoughts on hybrid events and the future of events.
