Talkdesk Inc. today said it has raised a $100 million funding round, calling it the largest round ever raised by a private company in the contact center industry.

The Series B funding, which was led by hedge fund Viking Global Investors LP with participation from existing investor DFJ Growth Management LLC, boosts the company’s valuation above $1 billion, making it a so-called unicorn.

Talkdesk’s Enterprise Contact Center Platform is a cloud service that includes a machine learning component that analyzes interactions with customers to recommend actions customer service agents should take. The service integrates voice over IP, intelligent routing, voice analytics, auto dialing and workforce management tools into an integrated suite.

One of the distinguishing features of the company’s product is the voice analytics component, which analyzes recorded conversations between customers and call center representatives to look for patterns that suggest sales opportunities, problems or ways to make the context center more efficient. The software also improves representative productivity by delivering information about an inbound call before the representative answers the phone.

The contact center software market is mature but still growing rapidly. Grand View Research Inc. forecasts that the market will grow more than 15 percent annually to reach nearly $48 billion by 2025. Talkdesk is betting that its cloud-native architecture and innate machine learning gives it an edge over more established competitors, which tend to be rooted in on-premises infrastructure. Consultancy MZA Ltd. estimates 88 percent of contact center software is still delivered on-premises. “This is one of the last markets to make the transition to the cloud,” said Chief Executive Tiago Paiva. “Most of the products are going on 20 years or more in age.”

Founded in Portugal in 2011, Talkdesk is now based in San Francisco and sell primarily into the North American market, which makes up 85 percent of its business. The company has traditionally focused on midsize companies, but with the fresh infusion of cash will move its target up the scale. Enterprise sales tripled last year, Paiva said.

The large investment is expected to help. “One thing we faced before in selling to enterprises was ‘How well funded are you?'” he said. “That’s one of the reasons we raised this big round.”

The new cash infusion, the company’s first in three years, brings its total funding to $124 million. Talkdesk said it will use the funds to ramp up investment in areas like context-sensitive routing of voice and digital interactions, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence. It also intends to expand its ecosystem of add-on tools and integrations with collaboration platforms.

That ecosystem is another asset in selling to enterprises, Paiva said. “When we started going to large enterprises we quickly realized that they each wanted 50 features that we don’t have,” he said.  The company’s AppConnect app store currently hosts more than 25 add-ons developed by partners.

The company claims more than 1,400 customers, including Dropbox Inc., The Scotts Co. and Peloton Cycle Inc.

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