Business communications service provider Dialpad Inc. is ending 2021 on a high, raising $170 million in funding at a $2.2 billion valuation.

ICONIQ Capital led today’s round, which also saw participation from Amasia, GV, OMERS Growth Equity, Work-Bench, Section 32 and T-Mobile Ventures. The funding brings Dialpad’s total amount raised to date to $418 million.

Dialpad is the creator of a unified business communications platform that connects enterprise teams through a combination of voice, video, messages and online meetings. It’s artificial intelligence-powered offerings include a voice-over-internet-protocol-based video conferencing system for business collaboration, called Dialpad Meeting. It provides a slick interface from where users can find, message and call their contacts and co-workers, similar to something like Slack.

Further offerings in Dialpad’s toolkit include a comprehensive business messaging platform, plus an enterprise phone system that enables companies to spin up international offices in any country, regardless of whether they have a presence there.

Dialpad also sells an extensive contact center system that leverages AI chatbots to help companies field customer calls more effectively. Finally, it offers voice intelligence tools, using natural language processing and voice recognition to provide recommendations in real time and comprehensive post-call notes and transcripts.

The company says the funding, plus its double unicorn valuation, highlights how its platform is helping enterprises avoid the problem of “app overload” by delivering all possible modes of business communication through a single app.

Dialpad’s unified communications approach has won the company a lot of fans, and it said today’s funding round follows a year of strong growth. Dialpad Chief Financial Officer Mike Kourey said customer adoption of its tools hit an “all-time high” in 2021 and continues to accelerate, though he didn’t provide exact numbers.

Notably, Dialpad increased its total staff headcount by 50% over the past year, to almost 1,000 employees, with an expanded presence in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

“This latest round of funding, and increased valuation, showcases Dialpad’s continued momentum and strengthens our dedication to helping companies scale and enterprises thrive in today’s hybrid, work-from-anywhere world,” said Dialpad Chief Executive Craig Walker.

Dialpad said it will use the money from today’s round to invest more in the development and application of AI throughout its platform. The company also plans to continue hiring more talent for its data engineering and AI teams, as well as its customer-facing roles.

Photo: Dialpad