Grammarly Inc., the developer of a writing assistant powered by artificial intelligence that helps people communicate effectively, today announced that it raised $200 million in new funding that puts the company’s valuation at a stunning $13 billion.

This third funding round was joined by new investors, including Baillie Gifford and funds and accounts managed by BlackRock Inc., among others.

“Grammarly’s latest funding round underscores the importance of our mission and the broad need for effective communication,” said Brad Hoover (pictured), chief executive of Grammarly. “By enabling clear and confident communication, Grammarly’s platform helps people excel both personally and professionally.”

The platform provides users corrections for grammar, word choice and punctuation as they type and for already written documents, which allows for cleaner documents. It also can give advanced suggestions on writing style to help with clearer communication. Users can also see a “tone detector” which attempts to discern how writing will be received such as “formal,” “optimistic” and “friendly.”

Grammarly originally started as a web plug-in that provided these capabilities through a browser. This week the company released a desktop app for Windows and Mac that opens up a huge variety of places for auto-editing.

“This is a big step toward breaking down technological barriers and achieving effective communication where important writing happens,” said Hoover. “With one easy installation, our writing suggestions will now work across more desktop and web applications than ever before.”

With the Grammarly desktop app, users can receive writing suggestions in Microsoft Office, Slack, Discord and numerous other applications where users engage in writing, chat and other communication.

Grammarly also announced Grammarly for Developers, which introduced a Text Editor software development kit. With the SDK, developers can quickly add Grammarly’s capabilities to their apps with only a few lines of code. 

The SDK is designed to allow developers access to Grammarly’s real-time writing assistance for four main categories: correctness (grammar and writing mechanics), clarity (readability and conciseness), engagement (vocabulary and diversity) and delivery (confidence and tone).

The Text Editor SDK is currently in beta but will be released into general availability in the coming months.

Since the company’s last funding round two years ago, which raised $90 million, Grammarly has also invested in increased security measures. This followed a security vulnerability incident that exposed sensitive information for an estimated 22 million Grammarly subscribers in 2018. To the company’s credit, it was patched in a matter of days of its discovery.

With this new fundraising, Grammarly intends to expand its reach while also advancing its back-end AI technology for natural language processing and machine learning that provides personalized feedback on grammar, style and clarity.

Photo: Grammarly