French enterprise marketplace provider Mirakl SAS said today it has raised a chunky $555 million late-stage funding round that more than doubles its valuation to $3.5 billion.

The Series E round was led by Silver Lake and also saw participation from existing investors 83North, Elaia Partners, Felix Capital and Permira.

Mirakl has created a software-as-a-service platform that companies can use to create and manage e-commerce marketplaces on their websites, like Amazon.com Inc. does on its own website. In e-commerce, there has been a trend among bigger companies to enable third-parties to sell products and services on their website to increase the usefulness of their own offerings and better serve customers.

By creating a marketplace, companies can sell additional products from other firms to their customers, taking a small cut of those profits in some cases and keeping everyone happy. So for example, a furniture company might create a marketplace where it can upsell household appliances.

Mirakl co-founder and co-Chief Executive Adrien Nussenbaum told SiliconANGLE that with the acceleration of e-commerce during the pandemic, customers across industries are demanding to have everything, anytime and from anywhere. He said the only option for companies to meet these new customer demands in a fast, scalable and low-risk manner is to establish a marketplace.

“Marketplaces have grabbed a disproportionate share of growth, expanding at twice the rate of overall e-commerce because they empower businesses to establish connections with a broader set of suppliers with alternative supply chains featuring more products and services,” Nussenbaum said.

Mirakl’s software help companies to build and manage such a marketplace. It says more than 300 of the world’s leading brands, including Kroger Co., ABB Ltd., Carrefour SA and Leroy Merlin SA, are using its platform.

In addition, Mirakl’s SaaS product also powers a number of business-to-business marketplaces too. These industry-specific portals are used by big companies for procurement purposes and for bulk selling of parts, for example. In this segment, Mirakl’s clients include the likes of Airbus Helicopters SAS, Accor SA’s Astore and Toyota Material Handling.

The company also has a specific marketplace platform for companies that want to sell services, as opposed to physical products.

Mirakl says it uses artificial intelligence to power its catalog manager tool that enables companies to merge different listings and add information to their marketplace. Other AI-enabled features include fraud detection.

Mirakl also has a kind of marketplace of marketplaces with its Mirakl Connect service. A seller can create a company profile and promote its products on multiple different Mirakl-powered marketplaces at once. Marketplace operators can view these profiles to see which companies’ products might appeal to their customers, and add them quickly and easily.

Nussenbaum said the company sees Mirakl Connect as a critical part of both its present and future, because it’s the sellers that act as the fuel that powers marketplace growth. By expanding Mirakl Connect, the company will help its customers to onboard new products in their marketplaces quickly. That’s important, Nussenbaum said, because each new seller added to a marketplace nets an average of $15,000 for the operator.

“To launch and scale successfully, businesses operating marketplaces need to have a strong and growing base of trusted, high-quality sellers,” Nussenbaum said. “When you partner with trusted marketplace sellers, you’re able to offer customers greater choice and more competitive prices while reinforcing the strength of your own brand.”

Mirakl Connect also gives marketplace operators access to third-party technology from various payment services providers, fulfillment companies and feed aggregators that provide expanded options for their customers.

“This jumpstarts the ability of industry leaders to unlock the exponential growth of marketplaces,” Nussenbaum said. “There is no limit to the number of marketplaces that a market can support. With the right strategy, there can be as many marketplaces as there are trusted brands.”

Nussenbaum added that not every marketplace has to be a digital giant like Amazon. “Rather, the marketplace model is a way for businesses of all kinds to respond to new customer demands and expectations by providing a better experience,” he said. “There is plenty of traffic to be won, but it requires marketplaces to scale their catalogs at speed with high-quality sellers.”

All in all, it’s a fairly comprehensive offering, and given the nature of today’s pandemic-afflicted world it’s no surprise to learn that business has been booming for Mirakl. The company reported 90% growth in year-over-year bookings during the first half of this year, for example, though it didn’t reveal absolute numbers.

Mirakl has set out a number of ambitious targets in light of its new funding. First, it plans to hire 350 new engineers by 2023, growing its Mirakl Labs team to 500 with a view to expanding the capabilities of its marketplace technology platform. In particular, there will be a focus on expanding AI, automation and features that enable newer business models such as drop-ship expansion.

The company will also double the size of its customer success team and it has big plans to expand Mirakl Connect, while increasing its overall footprint in Europe, Middle East and Africa, the Americas and the Asia-Pacific regions.

Constellation Research Inc. analyst R “Ray” Wang told SiliconANGLE that the future of e-commerce lies not in another transactional system, but rather in multisided marketplaces.

“Mirakl is of interest given its size and scale,” Wang said. “The likes of AppDirect, Ingram Micro and CDW are all potential players in this space too, but customers, partners and vendors are seeking easy-to-use models. But for now, Mirakl has a good thing going and a justified valuation.”

“This is an extraordinary time for e-commerce, and we see Mirakl as a generational company with a uniquely compelling opportunity to capitalize on that momentum,” said Christian Lucas, managing director and co-head of Silver Lake EMEA.

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