A man enters the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, Jan. 29, 2017. Photo: Reuters / Baz Ratner.

CTech –  Gloat, which has developed an AI-powered talent marketplace, announced on Tuesday the completion of a $90 million Series D round led by Generation Investment Management. This is the first investment made by Generation from its $1.7 billion Sustainable Solutions Fund IV, which it announced last month. Gloat didn’t reveal its valuation in the round, but it is estimated to be close to $1 billion. All the funding will enter the company’s account.

Generation Investment Management is a financial services and investment management firm founded in 2004 by former US Vice President Al Gore and Goldman Sachs’ Asset Management head David Blood.

“We reached Al Gore through our partners and I discovered that he is very interested in the sector that we are active in and he has helped us a lot,” Gloat CEO and co-founder Ben Reuveni told Calcalist.

Gloat has developed a workforce agility platform that breaks down organizational silos, analyzes employees’ skills at scale, and provides insights for talent decision-making. The company’s platform helps businesses to develop and deploy their talent, while continuously understanding and adapting their workforce to changing needs. Gloat clients include some of the world’s leading global enterprises, including Unilever, Schneider Electric, Mastercard, Standard Chartered Bank, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Novartis, HSBC, Seagate, and many more – making it used by millions of employees. Gloat’s customer base has increased over the past year by 2.5x, with its ARR growing threefold.

“The volatility in the market was good for us. Many companies began to look inwards for recruitments and focused on their existing talent pool,” said Reuveni. “We were always a cautious company and I never liked the excess in high-tech. Now our cautious conduct is paying off.”

Gloat was founded in 2015 by Reuveni, Amichai Schreiber, and Danny Shteinberg. The latest funding round, which included participation from Accel, Eight Roads Ventures, Intel Capital, and Lumir Ventures, brings its total funding to over $180 million. The company employs 300 people, including 150 in its R&D center in Israel. Gloat has offices in Tel Aviv, London, New York, and Melbourne.

“We raised more money because we believe that in the current state of the market we have an opportunity to grab a larger market share,” explained Reuveni. “I believe the cost of acquiring a customer will be much lower than before. We won’t slow down our growth, but like always, we will assess what areas in the company are not as critical to us. We feel that this is our opportunity to acquire companies. A lot of small companies are not going to be able to raise funds and will be looking for solutions they wouldn’t have considered a year ago and that is a very good opportunity for us.”