About Drift
Drift is a Boston-headquartered conversational marketing platform that deploys AI chatbots and live chat on websites for real-time buyer engagement. It integrates with HubSpot, Salesforce, and Marketo to capture leads, qualify prospects, and shorten sales cycles. The company serves B2B enterprises in software and services with tools for personalized visitor interactions.
Founded
2015
HQ
Website
Status
Acquired
Customer focus
B2B
Revenue model
Subscription
Drift Acquisition
Drift was acquired by Salesloft for an undisclosed price on 13 February 2024.
Before the acquisition Drift had raised $107M across 4 funding rounds.
Salesloft, an Atlanta-based provider of the AI-powered Revenue Orchestration Platform including tools like Rhythm for prioritizing buyer signals into workflows, acquired Drift, a Boston-based conversational marketing and buyer experience platform founded by David Cancel and Elias Torres offering AI-driven products such as Drift Engage, Site Concierge, and Bionic Chatbots. Announced on February 13, 2024, the deal unites category leaders in seller and buyer engagement to create the first end-to-end AI-powered platform orchestrating personalized omnichannel buyer journeys from web interactions to revenue outcomes, bridging longstanding sales-marketing gaps. The strategic rationale emphasizes enhanced buyer experiences, sales efficiency through conversation analysis and workflow integration, improved alignment between CMOs and CROs, and accelerated AI innovation amid evolving B2B expectations. No financial terms were disclosed. Drift will continue operating separately with deepened Salesloft integrations leveraging their prior existing partnership and 250 joint customers, enabling cross-sell opportunities. The combined entity serves nearly 6,000 global customers with employees across Atlanta, Boston, Tampa, San Francisco, London, Warsaw, Cape Town, and Guadalajara. Both companies posted strong recent performance: Salesloft expanded into enterprises like IBM, while Drift earned G2’s Best AI Products for 2024 recognition; leaders David Obrand (Salesloft CEO) and Scott Ernst (Drift CEO) highlighted unified go-to-market visions.
| Acquirer | Date | Type |
|---|---|---|
| 13 Feb 2024 | Strategic M&A |
Drift Funding History
Drift has raised a total of $107M across 4 funding rounds.
Drift's first fundraising round was a $15M Series A in January 2015. The most recent completed round was a $400K pre-seed round in December 2025.
Drift funding rounds
| Date | Stage | Investors | Raised | Deal Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 2025 | Pre-seed | Antler (lead) | $400K | - |
| Apr 2018 | Series C | Sequoia Capital (lead); General Catalyst; Harmony Partners; CRV | $60M | Drift, a conversational marketing and sales platform, raised $60 million in its Series C funding round on April 17-19, 2018, led by Sequoia Capital with participation from existing investors CRV and General Catalyst. The round brought Drift's total funding to $107 million, leaving the company with $90 million in cash on hand. Drift replaces traditional B2B marketing and sales processes by enabling real-time, 24/7 conversations with qualified buyers via pop-up chat windows on websites, aiming to generate leads and accelerate sales cycles. At the time, over 100,000 businesses worldwide used the platform, including AdRoll, Cornerstone OnDemand, Dyn, InVision, MongoDB, Vidyard, and Zuora. The funding was intended to support expansion of operations in Boston and San Francisco, including new offices, workforce growth from 130 employees, and acquisitions in voice and video technology to extend beyond online chat into other communication modes. CEO David Cancel highlighted the need for capital to make big future bets and build a pillar company in Boston, responding to shifts in B2B purchasing where individual employees make decisions independently. Drift positioned itself to create a modern buying experience, akin to an 'Amazon for businesses,' turning web visits into sales through chatbots originally used in support contexts but applied to sales. The round reflected strong investor confidence amid a favorable VC market, with Sequoia admiring Drift's potential despite no immediate need for funds. |
| Sep 2017 | Series B | General Catalyst (lead); HubSpot; HubSpot Ventures; Sequoia Capital; CRV | $32M | - |
| Jan 2015 | Series A | CRV (lead); General Catalyst; Jeff Seibert; Chang Corporation; HubSpot; NextView Ventures; Mike Volpe; Wayne Chang; Founder Collective; Brian Halligan; Florian Leibert | $15M | Drift raised $15 million in its Series A funding round in January 2015, led by CRV with participation from General Catalyst, Founder Collective, NextView Ventures, and individual investors including Brian Halligan, Dharmesh Shah, Jeff Seibert, Mike Volpe, Florian Leibert, and Wayne Chang. The funding was intended to develop and launch Drift's conversational marketing platform. Drift, founded in 2015 and headquartered in Boston, MA, provides enterprise software enabling sales and marketing teams to deliver personalized conversations. |
Who has invested in Drift?
15 investors have backed Drift across its funding rounds, including General Catalyst, CRV, Sequoia Capital, HubSpot, Antler and Founder Collective.
Lead investors include Antler, Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst and CRV.
Drift Investors
| Investor | HQ | Rounds | Role | First check |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | Lead | Jan 2015 | ||
| 3 | Lead | Jan 2015 | ||
| 2 | Participant | Jan 2015 | ||
| 2 | Lead | Sep 2017 | ||
| 1 | Participant | Jan 2015 | ||
| 1 | Participant | Jan 2015 | ||
| 1 | Participant | Jan 2015 | ||
| 1 | Participant | Sep 2017 | ||
| 1 | Participant | Jan 2015 | ||
| 1 | Participant | Jan 2015 | ||
| 1 | Lead | Dec 2025 | ||
| 1 | Participant | Jan 2015 | ||
| 1 | Participant | Jan 2015 | ||
This data is available for Pro users. Sign up to see all 15 Drift investors. Start Free Trial | ||||
Benchmark 350K+ Funding Rounds and Disclosed VC Valuation Multiples
Sign up to see data on 350K+ funding rounds and disclosed revenue and EBITDA valuation multiples, from seed, through growth stage, to pre-IPO.
Start Free TrialAcquisitions by Drift
Drift has acquired 3 companies to date.
Last acquisition by Drift was on September 3rd 2019. Drift acquired Giant Otter Technologies for undisclosed valuation.
Latest Acquisitions by Drift
| Description | Giant Otter Technologies builds conversational AI bots trained on call recordings and chat transcripts for automated customer interactions. San Francisco-based, the company structures data into reliable dialogue flows for industries like e-commerce and support services. Its platform generates bots that handle inquiries in structured sequences, ensuring consistency across deployments. Giant Otter Technologies integrates with existing CRM systems to deploy bots rapidly without manual scripting. | Siftrock is a B2B marketing automation company based in San Francisco that enhances sales pipelines through data enrichment and lead routing. Acquired by SendGrid in 2017, it integrates email verification, IP intelligence, and workflow triggers with CRMs like Marketo and Pardot, boosting deliverability and conversion rates for enterprise clients. | Fetchnotes is a cloud-based note-taking app that captures ideas via SMS commands like !buy milk or !read book title. Users organize notes into lists for tasks, books, movies, and groceries, with email digests and web dashboard access for searching and sharing across devices. |
| HQ Country | |||
| HQ City | Boston, MA | Seattle, WA | - |
| Deal Date | 3 Sep 2019 | 4 Sep 2018 | 21 Apr 2015 |
| Valuation | undisclosed | undisclosed | undisclosed |
| EV/Revenue | |||
| EV/EBITDA | |||
This data is available for Pro users. Sign up to see all Drift acquisitions and their M&A valuation multiples. Start Free Trial | |||
Drift Competitors
Drift competitors include listed companies like UNITED and Cheetah Mobile, and private ones like Yidian Zixun, Datami, Amperity and FXiaoKe.
| Company | HQ | Status | Revenue | EBITDA | Valuation | Revenue Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Private | - | - | $1B | - | ||
| Private | - | - | $700M | - | ||
| Publicly listed | $57M | ($7M) | $127M | 0.7x | ||
| Publicly listed | $172M | ($16M) | $92M | - | ||
| Private | $70M | - | $1B | 14.3x | ||
| Private | $43M | - | $1B | 23.3x |
Drift Public Comps
Drift is no longer listed, but its public comps include Appier Group, Rezolve AI, Deluxe, ZoomInfo, Yalla Group, Truecaller, Hello Group, Sprinklr, VNG Corp. and Sprout Social.
| Last FY | EV/Revenue | EV/EBITDA | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | EBITDA | Last FY | LTM | 2027E | Last FY | LTM | 2027E | |
| $281M | $44M | 3.4x | 2.9x | 21.6x | 15.7x | |||
| $47M | ($109M) | 23.3x | 4.0x | (10.0x) | (19.3x) | |||
| $2.1B | $379M | 1.2x | 1.2x | 6.7x | 5.6x | |||
| $1.2B | $326M | 2.0x | 2.1x | 7.8x | 5.1x | |||
| $342M | $128M | - | - | - | - | |||
| $195M | $61M | 3.2x | 3.4x | 10.2x | 11.8x | |||
| $1.5B | $215M | - | - | - | - | |||
| $857M | $66M | 1.0x | 1.0x | 13.6x | 5.5x | |||
This data is available for Pro users. Sign up to see all Drift competitors and their valuation data. Start Free Trial | ||||||||
Common questions about Drift
| When was Drift founded? | Drift was founded in 2015. |
| Where is Drift headquartered? | Drift is headquartered in Boston, MA, United States. |
| Is Drift publicly listed? | No, Drift was acquired by Salesloft in February 2024. |
| Who acquired Drift? | Drift was acquired by Salesloft in February 2024. |
| How much funding has Drift raised? | Drift has raised $107M across 4 funding rounds. |
| What was Drift's last funding round? | Drift's last funding round was a $400K pre-seed round in December 2025, led by Antler. |
| Who are Drift's investors? | Drift's investors include General Catalyst, CRV, HubSpot, Sequoia Capital, Jeff Seibert, Chang Corporation, NextView Ventures, HubSpot Ventures, Mike Volpe, Wayne Chang and 5 others. |
| Which companies are comparable to Drift? | Companies comparable to Drift include Yidian Zixun, Datami, UNITED, Cheetah Mobile, Amperity and FXiaoKe. |
| How many companies has Drift acquired? | Drift has acquired 3 companies, including Giant Otter Technologies, Siftrock and Fetchnotes. |
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