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Image credit: Hopin

London-based virtual events unicorn Hopin has, today, announced that it raised $450M (approx €380M) at a $7.75B (approx €6.54B) valuation in Series D funding. The round was co-led by Arena Holdings and Altimeter Capital. 

New and existing investors including Adams Street Partners, Untitled Investments, Andreessen Horowitz, DFJ Growth, General Catalyst, GIC, IVP, Northzone, Salesforce Ventures, Slack Fund, Temasek, and Tiger Global, also participated in the round. 

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The funding comes over four months after raising $400M in a Series C funding at a valuation of $5.65B (approx €4.77M). Since February of 2020, Hopin has raised more than $1B (approx €844M).

“Hopin started with the goal of giving people more options for meaningful connection,” said Johnny Boufarhat, CEO and Founder of Hopin. “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.

Capitalising opportunity

Founded in 2019, the company has seen demand for its software soar in the coronavirus pandemic. It is safe to say that Hopin is one of the few companies able to take advantage of the global shift to online meetings and conferencing that has taken place during pandemic lockdowns.

Johnny Boufarhat’s Hopin enables brands and communities to create all-in-one, live experiences. Through the platform, attendees can learn, interact, and connect with people from anywhere in the world. 

Further, anyone can create live virtual, hybrid and in-person events that are made highly interactive and immersive. With hybrid events expected to double in 2021, event organisers must have the tools they need to be successful.

Since the beginning of 2020, Hopin has scaled from six to more than 800+ employees in 47 countries and grown from a few hundred event creators using its platform to more than 100,000 organisations as well as millions of attendees showing up for events each month. 

Going beyond virtual

As a result, the company has expanded beyond virtual to become an all-in-one event management platform with various acquisitions. 

A couple of months back, Hopin acquired onsite event solutions company Boomset to add more capabilities such as kiosks, badges, and more to its hybrid offerings. With Boomset, Hopin aims to be the destination for onsite technology and services. 

Additionally, the company acquired video hosting service Streamable and video technology company Jamm to make a more robust experience for event managers and attendees. 

Last month, Hopin acquired Attendify, which will advance its event marketing product offering. Notably, Attendify provides an array of tools designed to help event managers deepen audience engagement and collect data and surface insights to optimise events. 

Further, the company acquired StreamYard, a leading video streaming studio, last year. This year, Hopin earned the position of No. 79 on the 2021 Fast Company Best Workplaces for Innovators list.

“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.”

The lucrative virtual events space

Last month, video communication app Zoom introduced Zoom Events in a bid to capitalise on the growing virtual events market and take on Hopin. Zoom Events enables large and small businesses to manage and host back-to-back event sessions from sales summits, customer events, trade shows, and internal events.

Also, the platform will allow users to build an event hub to manage and share events, registration, attendance, ticket sales, and networking through a chat-enabled virtual event lobby. The events can be kept private or posted to a public directory.