Sales software companies Seismic and Highspot to merge

Seismic Software Inc. and Highspot Inc., two well-funded startups that develop software for enterprise sales teams, have signed a merger agreement.

The companies announced the deal on Thursday. The combined organization is set to operate under the Seismic brand and will be led by Seismic Chief Executive Rob Tarkoff. Robert Wahbe, the founding CEO of Highspot, will become a member of the board.

The deal comes about six years after Seismic closed its most recent funding round, a $90 million investment led by Permira. The private equity firm also bought a significant number of shares from Seismic’s existing backers and became its controlling stakeholder. After the merger with Highspot closes, Permira will receive a controlling stake in the combined company.

Seismic provides a so-called sales enablement platform that companies use to store pitch decks, case studies and other promotional materials. A set of artificial intelligence features called Auro can customize the content for each customer. For example, a salesperson could ask Seismic to condense a lengthy product document into a PowerPoint presentation. 

Companies use Seismic to store not only marketing collateral but also their sales teams’ internal training materials. When a manager uploads learning content to the platform, Aura automatically filters duplicate items. It then adds descriptive tags that make it easier for salespeople to find specific snippets of text.

Seismic organizes training content into courses that it customizes for each user. If a salesperson forgets to mention a product to an important lead, the platform might create a course that includes upselling guidelines. An analytics dashboard enables managers to measure the effectiveness of learning content.

Seismic’s training courses are complemented by AI-powered simulated customers. According to the company, salespeople can run a pitch by those simulated customers to find areas for improvement.

Highspot offers a platform that includes many of the same features. Companies can use it to store promotional materials and create training content for salespeople. 

The platform also includes features not available in Seismic. One of them is a tool that tech firms can use to share sales collateral with resellers, identify which pieces of content are most effective and refine their content library accordingly. Another feature called Digital Sales Room makes it easier to distribute promotional materials to leads.

Highspot had raised more than $650 million in funding from Salesforce Ventures and other investors. After its most recent round in early 2022, the company disclosed that its annual recurring revenue had grown 935% over the preceding three years. Its customer base includes Amazon Web Services Inc., OpenAI Group PBC and other major tech firms.

The Highspot and Seismic platforms will both continue to be supported after the merger. Additionally, the combined company will develop new AI features to automate more sales tasks for customers.

Image: Seismic