Co-founder Arvind Jain’s Glean Rides the AI Wave

Silicon Valley-based Glean, valued at $5 billion, offers an AI-powered platform as a work tool for employees

(Photo: Arvind Jain, co-founder Glean.)

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December 19, 2024

Since November 2022, when OpenAI launched its ChatGPT online tool, artificial intelligence (AI) has dominated technology spending by major corporations as well as boosted valuations of AI related companies.

The big gainers range from Microsoft-backed OpenAI, valued at $157 billion in its October funding round, and chip maker Nvidia, which has risen nearly ten-fold to a market value of $3 trillion, to 32 AI startups which attained $1 billion plus valuations in 2024, according to CBInsights.

Glean, a Palo Alto, California, based AI startup, has seen its value more than double in 2024. It was valued at $4.8 billion at its latest funding round in September, while raising more than $260 million.

AI is forecast to transform businesses in ways that “promises to be as big or bigger than the internet, mobile, cloud, and other major technology shifts of the past century,” Glean co-founder Arvind Jain said in a blog post.

Glean is using AI to connect and understand the data, people, processes, and context of an employee’s tasks within a company. In September, it introduced a new version of its AI platform with a set of advanced prompting capabilities. Among customers, Glean’s Work AI Assistant is one of the tools employees use at work every day, in addition to chat (Slack, Teams, or other), email, calendar, video conferencing, and office productivity suite. Customers average five queries per day on the Glean platform, about as often as people typically search the web with Google.

In the year ended September 2024, Glean more than tripled its business, serving companies in telecommunications, banking, retail, travel, social networking, manufacturing, semiconductors, and electronics.

Using Glean, for instance, Deutsche Telecom has built an "employee concierge which brings both world knowledge, along with the hundreds of internal knowledge bases to thousands of our employees' fingertips," Jonathan Abrahamson, Chief Product & Digital Officer at the German telecom company says in a Glean blog post.

“Similar to how some people now reach for ChatGPT before Google, Glean Chat can answer some questions even more effectively than a search can,” Art Chaidarun, Principal Software Engineer at Duolingo, an online language learning tool, says in a Glean blog post.

Investors in Glean include major Silicon Valley venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital, as well as SoftBank Vision Fund 2. Glean reportedly has around 700 employees.

Glean was co-founded in 2019 by a team of four engineers. “In our personal lives,” states a blog on Glean’s website, “we have tools to help us find pretty much whatever we need. Why don’t we have the search tools we need at work? And that was the beginning of Glean.”

Prior to Glean, co-founder and Chief Executive Arvind Jain co-founded Rubrik, 2014 to present, which operates in cloud data management. Earlier, he served as a Distinguished Engineer at Google, 2003-2014, where he led various teams in Search, Maps, and YouTube.

Jain was a founding engineer at Riverbed Technology, 2002-2003; worked at Akamai Technologies, 1999-2002; and started his career in the U.S. as a software engineer at Microsoft, 1997-1999.

Jain earned a Masters, computer science, from the University of Washington, 1996-1997; and a BTech, computer science, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, 1992-1996.

Co-founder Vishwanath TR leads Glean's technical infrastructure teams. Prior to Glean, he spent nearly a decade as a Principal Software Engineer at Facebook, 2010-2019, working on areas like News Feed ranking, Ads, and Developer Platform. Earlier he was a software engineer at Microsoft, 2002-2010, tackling web services and developer platforms. He also worked at Zambeel and Oracle.

Vishwanath earned an M.S., computer science, University of Texas, Austin, 1997-1999; and a BTech, Computer Science, from IIT Delhi, 1993-1997.

Tony Gentilcore, another co-founder, leads Glean's Product Engineering team. Earlier, while at Google, 2006-2016, he helped modernize the web search results page and founded and led Chrome's Speed Team. He earned a B.S. in electrical and electronics engineering from the St. Louis University, 2000-2004.

Piyush Prahladka, the fourth co-founder, built Glean’s core search product, 2019-2023, according to his LinkedIn profile. Last year he left to found a startup, in stealth mode, which is building a tool to manage work.

Before Glean, Prahladka worked at Uber, 2017-2019, on Uber Transit and Uber Shared Bikes; and spent over a decade at Google, 2005-2017, including on the core search ranking team and building Google Helpouts. He earned a Bachelors in computer science, from IIT, Bombay, 2001-2005.

Spending on AI is forecast to nearly triple from $235 billion in 2024 to $635 billion in 2028, according to tech research and advisory firm IDC. Spending on generative AI tools and products, similar to those sold by Glean, is estimated to rise to $210 billion in 2028.

Glean is using the funds it raised in 2024 to build a platform which will provide a business with tools needed to create “custom generative AI experiences grounded in their unique company knowledge” to improve workflows and productivity.

“You can’t drive AI transformation in a company without first getting its employees to embrace AI. After all, it’s AI-centric employees who will ultimately create AI-centric companies,” Arvind Jain says in a Glean blog post. “We believe that every employee, in every role, in every company, can leverage AI daily to exponentially increase their impact.”