Ukrainian Grammarly raises $90M at a valuation of $1B and becomes a unicorn

Ukrainian tech company Grammarly, which develops an AI communication assistant, has raised a $90 million investment. The new round, like the previous one, is being led by General Catalyst. Existing investors including IVP, as well as new ones, also participated in the round.

Thus, Grammarly already has a total of $200 million in investments. According to TechCrunch, the company officially became a unicorn.

About Grammarly

Grammarly develops a digital writing tool using artificial intelligence which helps to write texts in English.

The company plans to invest towards further improvement of the technology. Grammarly’s goal is to create a comprehensive assistant for personal and professional communication in English.

Grammarly intends to improve its product and will continue to work on more complex aspects of language and communication, in particular on the development of the recently launched tone detector.

History & Growth

The company was founded by Ukrainians Maksym Lytvyn, Oleksii Shevchenko, and Dmytro Lider in 2019 in Kyiv.

Grammarly is a profitable company since 2011.

According to the company, since the first round of investment in May 2017, Grammarly has increased the number of users more than three times. Currently, it has got more than 20 million daily active users.

Team

Grammarly is also growing in the number of employees. The company opened its fourth office in Vancouver and doubled the number of team members in offices in Kyiv, New York, and San Francisco.

The plans for the near future are to expand the current office space in Kyiv by an additional 1,300 sqm, which will accommodate another 130 people.

How will this affect the market?

According to Denys Dovhopolyi of GrowthUp Group, this is a landmark deal for the Ukrainian startup and venture capital market.

Even though now Grammarly is actually an American company, it has enrolled Ukraine to the club of home countries unicorns. On the other hand, the company shows one of the steepest ways of startup development:

Firstly, yes, Ukrainians with already existing experience can found companies that play a significant role in the global venture capital ecosystem. Secondly, startups can be created with little or no external financing, and then it can make its way to the market using revenue.

And the main thing is developing a product that solves a really serious problem that millions of users face every day,” says Denys Dovhopolyi.