糖心视频

Extended warranty provider is back seven months after securing a $40 million Series B funding 鈥� this time with a big backer and an even bigger round to go after the .

Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily

San Francisco-based Extend, founded in 2019, interacts with consumers at their point of purchase, providing an application programming interface that enables any merchant to offer extended warranties and protection plans, as well as provide them with a new revenue stream while giving customers greater peace of mind when making purchase decisions.

led the $260 million Series C investment into the company. It was joined by existing investors , and , as well as new investors , , , and .

The oversubscribed round brings Extend鈥檚 total funding to more than $315 million, according to Crunchbase data, and also elevates the company into unicorn status with a valuation north of $1.6 billion.

鈥淭his is a very large infusion of capital into the business and allows us to continue to build best-in-class product protection,鈥� , co-founder and CEO, told Crunchbase News. 鈥淭his enables us to move to full stack and be able to create customized, bespoke products that can cover issues important to them and help merchants address shortcomings that legacy providers couldn鈥檛 do.鈥�

This new round of funding will be used to continue to scale the Extend team, accelerate its technology development and expand its suite of services. The company is going international: It is fully licensed to operate in Canada and will be launching both English and Canadian French versions. In addition, Extend is working on Europe and United Kingdom licenses.

The company is also hiring in the areas of product and design engineering, customer support and claims, financial accounting, and marketing, intending to reach 400 employees by the end of the year, Levin said.

鈥淲e have not spent a dollar on marketing yet, so we plan to build out a team to create the leading brand behind product protection and help us resonate with consumers,鈥� he added.

Extend is experiencing demand from companies of all sizes, and the new funding also enables it to continue moving up the sales funnel to work with bigger companies.

鈥淲e have an opportunity to go after the legacy brands, like and , and take business because they don鈥檛 have the market tooling to streamline the experience,鈥� Levin said. 鈥淎t the same time, we have an opportunity to move up the market and work with companies doing $10 billion, $20 billion and $50 billion in warrantable goods sales. There is a lot of pressure, but we are ready to do it.鈥�

Meanwhile, , general partner at Meritech Capital, said the firm took a bet on Extend during its Series B round, and loves the management team and believes in its traction and Extend鈥檚 opportunity to bring an care-like experience to the e-commerce space.

He also believes Extend is providing a unique offer with its application programming interface integration, something he said only 1 percent of merchants were able to provide. Extend is now doing it for the other 99 percent, he added.

鈥淭he money is going to last them a very long time,鈥� Clayton said. 鈥淓xtend got a lot of interest for this round, and SoftBank was one of those. Extend was early in cementing its leadership in the industry and will have a great outcome.鈥�

Illustration: