Qualtrics raises $180 million on $2.5 billion valuation

Qualtrics, an online survey research platform, announced Wednesday that it has raised $180 million in new venture funding by Insight Venture Partners and Accel, with participation from Sequoia Capital.

Qualtrics is Provo, Utah-based SaaS startup that bootstrapped for a decade before taking $220 million in venture funding from Accel and Sequoia. The company says its profitable and boasts pre-IPO unicorn status with a valuation that now stands at $2.5 billion.

This investment also makes Qualtrics the largest aggregate investment in Accel's entire portfolio, which includes Facebook, Slack, Dropbox, Cloudera, and Atlassian. Coincidentally, Qualtrics also announced that it has appointed Atlassian CFO Murray Demo to its board of directors.

"We have been following Qualtrics since 2010," said Ryan Sweeney, partner at Accel and Qualtrics board member. "Each year, they have surpassed aggressive goals and continued to stay cash flow positive. From a revenue standpoint, Qualtrics is already the size of most public companies and there's room for a lot more growth considering the large and expanding market in which they play."

The funding news comes on the heels of Qualtrics' release of its XM Platform, which aims to provide data to businesses about their customers' experiences. Current users of the platform include JetBlue, Michelin, Vivint, and Allianz. Qualtrics ambitiously predicts the XM Platform will become as ubiquitous as Salesforce and Workday in modern enterprises.

"We have a lot of great momentum right now with the launch of the XM Platform," said Qualtrics CEO and founder Ryan Smith. This raise is a great step forward for everyone involved."

Right now it's not entirely clear where that next step forward will take Qualtrics, at least in terms of an initial public offering. Qualtrics was widely expected to IPO sometime in 2017, but the latest funding round likely postpones that process.

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