Dublin sales forecasting firm bought by CallidusCloud for $13m

Dublin-headquartered Datahug has been bought by US software firm CallidusCloud for $13 million (€11.7 million).

The company, which was founded by Connor Murphy and Ray Smith and launched at the Web Summit in 2010, will now form the CallidusCloud predictive analytics, AI and machine learning innovation centre.

"There are more than 50 million companies in the world. They all want better sales forecasting," said Leslie Stretch, president and chief executive of CallidusCloud. "Datahug's unique, patented technology delivers rich, predictive analysis of sales pipelines in a visually stunning way."

Datahug was founded to help firms drive sales and business development by allowing the business to identify and tap into previously unknown business relationships. It counts Nitro, Instructure, G2 Crowd, McCann Fitzgerald and Scottish Equity Partners among its customers.

CallidusCloud specialises in cloud-based sales, marketing, learning and customer experience solutions.

“CallidusCloud brings a wealth of experience in our target markets and a loyal customer base who will be keen to tap into the value of predictive analytics that accelerate sales,” said Mr Smith, Datahug’s chief executive.

Datahug was backed by Draper Espirit, Salesforce Ventures, Ron Conway and Oyster Capital Partners, and raised $4 million in its series A round in 2013. Mr Murphy stepped back from his role as chief executive with the company in 2014, ahead of Datahug's ramping up of its US expansion. He is now based in Germany

Writing on Twitter about the acquisition, Mr Murphy said it was “a bittersweet day”.