Absurd. When I see deals this large, especially in enterprise software, it raises alarm bells. It seems likely there are at least a few “quid pro quos” involved here. When your customers and investors overlap and run in the same circles, it’s hard to avoid the nepotism inherent in that world. The board members, investors, and customers are probably all executives at the same 50-100 companies. They have the power to purchase the product (demonstrating growth), invest in the product (demonstrating increasing valuation), and then acquire the product at a multiple of what they invested in it for.
I also wonder how much the founders are controlling, or if this is a case like Box where the founder owns <10% and the rest of the huge valuation is spread across dozens of different investors.