Glean Pulls in $260M to Reinvent Enterprise Knowledge as the ‘ChatGPT for Work

“Put knowledge where people trip over it” – Carla O’Dell

Amid the dominance of digital clutter, Glean emerged with a mission: to make sense of the vast information that modern enterprises drown in. Founded in 2019 by a team of tech veterans, Glean is turning the chaos of scattered data into something every worker dreams of—a seamless and intuitive search experience. With their latest funding round of $260 million, the company is poised to continue reshaping how businesses access and manage knowledge.

“This is exactly what we’re building at Glean: Work AI for all.” says Arvind Jain

A Challenge Close to Home

The idea for Glean originated from a common frustration: information overload. Arvind Jain, Glean’s co-founder and CEO, first encountered this issue at Rubrik, a company he helped build. As Rubrik grew, Jain noticed productivity slowing due to knowledge being scattered across numerous applications, making it nearly impossible for employees to find the information they needed promptly. This challenge inspired Jain and his co-founders—T.R. Vishwanath (Infrastructure Lead), Tony Gentilcore (Product Engineering Lead), and Piyush Prahladka (former Head of Search & AI)—to create Glean. Their goal was to develop a search tool with the power of Google but tailored for the complexities of modern enterprise environments.

“About four or five years into the company, we started to notice we were not moving as fast anymore. It becomes very difficult for companies today to organize all of their internal company knowledge and data, across hundreds of different applications, to make it easily accessible,” Jain explained.

AI-Powered Knowledge Discovery

Since its inception, Glean has rapidly evolved. Its AI-powered search engine now integrates with over 100 enterprise applications, streamlining access to the exact information employees need from a vast network of data. The core of Glean’s technology is its sophisticated Knowledge Graph, which connects people, projects, and content across a company. This approach provides a level of contextual awareness that surpasses traditional search engines, offering users insights they might not even know they needed. Advanced personalization tailors search results to a user’s role, project, or interaction history, creating an almost invisible layer of assistance for every search query.

“We have a platform that you can access all this information. We call it the knowledge graph of your Enterprise through our APIs and AI, and have a platform also for building no-code applications.” said Tamar Yehoshua, Glean President of Product and Technology

Bringing Generative AI to the Enterprise

Glean has integrated Generative AI into its platform, leveraging large language models (LLMs) through a sophisticated Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architecture. This approach involves three key steps: translating natural language queries into search queries, retrieving relevant documents based on user permissions, and generating answers grounded in the retrieved context. By using this RAG technology, Glean ensures that AI responses are based on real-time company data, significantly reducing the risk of hallucinations and outdated information.

Additionally, Glean’s RAG-based system helps maintain strict security and privacy controls, as the LLMs do not have direct access to all company data. The company evaluates the effectiveness of their RAG system by examining factors such as completeness, groundedness, and factual accuracy of the responses. This method also allows Glean to work with various LLM providers while maintaining control over retrieval and security aspects of their AI infrastructure.

Empowering the Workforce with No-Code Tools

Glean Apps, a standout feature of the Glean Work AI platform, empowers enterprises to create custom generative AI experiences tailored to their unique needs. With no-code and low-code development options, users can build AI assistants, agents, copilots, and chatbots without extensive coding expertise. The apps seamlessly integrate with enterprise data, ensuring both relevance and security while offering robust access control features. Glean Apps also connects with a variety of enterprise tools and data sources, providing AI-driven insights and proactive capabilities that anticipate user needs. Designed for scalability, the platform includes a unified search interface across multiple data sources and offers a suite of tools, including an app builder, APIs, and SDKs, to support the development of custom AI solutions for both technical and non-technical users.

Glean Assistant

The Glean assistant is an AI-powered tool that lets users easily access their enterprise’s data by asking questions in natural language. Using a secure Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architecture, it avoids fine-tuning models with sensitive company data. Instead, it follows a three-step process: translating queries, retrieving relevant documents, and generating answers. With integration across 100+ enterprise apps, the assistant delivers personalized results based on a user’s role and team, streamlining data access. Though currently separate from Glean’s search interface, plans are in place to merge these experiences for a seamless workflow.

To help users get the most out of the assistant, Glean offers prompt suggestions based on successful queries from peers. It also provides citations and links to verify information, adding transparency. Users can choose from leading LLM providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google’s Gemini for the assistant’s generative capabilities. To ensure high-quality responses, Glean uses innovative evaluation methods like “LLM as judge” to continuously improve accuracy and reliability, making it a powerful tool for workplace productivity.

“AI has the potential to change how we work. In the future, every person who works will have an amazing personal assistant, powered by AI, so that they can make better decisions faster than ever before. Our vision is to democratize access to these personal assistants so that everyone has the luxury of an AI that can help them do their work.” says Arvind.

A $260M Vote of Confidence

Glean’s rapid rise and impact have garnered significant investor attention. Glean’s latest funding round was led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from existing investors including General Catalyst, Kleiner Perkins, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Since its founding, Glean has raised a total of $615 million, with a recent Series E round of $260 million in September 2024 pushing its valuation to $4.6 billion. This round follows previous investments, including a $100 million Series C in 2022 and a $200 million Series D earlier in 2024.

Eddie Zhou, Glean’s Head of AI, shared in a March interview with PYMNTS, “Every knowledge worker, or really anyone using a computer, can find value in this.”

Building a Loyal Customer Base

Glean’s solutions have resonated with businesses across various industries. The company now serves over 200 enterprise customers, including notable names like Duolingo, Databricks, and Plaid. This expanding customer base has contributed to Glean’s impressive financial performance, with an annualized revenue of $39 million by January 2024—a fourfold increase from the previous year. The company has also doubled its workforce, now employing over 337 people, with plans to reach 700 by the end of 2024.

Arvind explains that while ChatGPT answers general questions, Glean is specifically designed to address questions related to your company by tapping into internal data across various systems. By securely using this knowledge to provide accurate responses, Glean will grow as it becomes an indispensable tool for employees seeking quick, relevant answers tailored to their work.

Recognition and the Road Ahead

Glean’s innovative approach has earned it accolades from Forbes’ AI50 Top AI Firms list, LinkedIn’s Top Startups, and Great Place to Work certification. With its latest funding, Glean plans to expand its AI capabilities, enhance its product offerings, and continue scaling across industries. As businesses face an ever-growing tide of digital information, Glean’s tools are becoming indispensable.

Glean Technologies has launched their first office in India. The Indian office will serve as a center of operations for various functions including finance, sales, R&D, and business operations. This innovation site will play a key role in enabling Glean’s customers to deploy Gen AI assistants and applications at scale globally. The company is entering the Indian market at a time when enterprises and startups are trying to capitalize on the rapidly evolving Gen AI scenario in India.

With roots in a personal frustration and a vision for a smarter, faster workplace, Glean is more than just a search engine. It represents a window into the future of work, promising to simplify the complex world of enterprise information management and make it more efficient. Glean is part of a wave of startups trying to bring generative AI capabilities to businesses, competing with larger tech companies like Microsoft and Google.

Arvind Jain tweeted, “When we first started @glean, pretty much everyone told me “don’t do enterprise search.” They referenced a graveyard of companies that had tried to do it before and failed.” 

Well, they won!