UPDATED 01:14 EDT / MAY 09 2017

APPS

Grammarly raises $110M to help perfect your writing

Many people feel that good grammar is important – even venture capitalists. Several VC firms have just decided to throw $110 million at it, or rather, a company that uses artificial intelligence software to help people improve the quality and readability of the content they create.

Grammarly Inc., as the company is known, offers grammar checking tools for writers, students and editors to ensure that the content they produce is free from silly spelling mistakes and grammatical errors that readers might pick up on. The software is free to use and can correct mistakes in real-time while writers are tapping away at their keyboards. The company also offers paid, premium features for those who’re deadly serious about creating pitch perfect prose that’s able to satisfy even the harshest of grammar Nazis.

The round was led by General Catalyst, with participation from Breyer Capital, IVP, SignalFire and Spark Capital.

What’s perhaps even more surprising than the fact that someone is willing to throw such a vast sum of money at grammar checking tools is that it took them more than eight years to do so. Grammarly was actually founded way back in 2008, but its tools have only really become popular in the last couple of years or so.

Still, the company said it now has around 6.9 million daily active users, though most of them only use its free tools. However, it reckons there are a decent number of users who pay $12 a month for its premium tools in order to create error-free content. Premium users also get help with sentence structure and vocabulary, in addition to spelling and grammar checking.

“Grammarly is growing faster than anything we normally see in San Francisco,” said Jules Maltz, a general partner at IVP. “We expect this to be a meaningful company in the years to come.”

Grammarly offers downloadable software as well as a Chrome extension that checks users grammar online. The company said its secret sauce is artificial intelligence, or more specifically, natural language processing software, which can proofread content online and also in Microsoft Word. The tool emphasizes grammar mistakes and provides an explanation why and how to fix it, and also suggests context-optimized vocabulary alternatives. The tools work with multiples document types and there’s a plagiarism checker as well.

Grammarly didn’t reveal any specific plans about how it intends to use the money, but considering the enormous amount of new content produced every single day, it’s clear that it has lots of opportunity. [Editor’s note: That’s for sure.]

Image: Grammarly

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