June 10 (Reuters) - Glean said on Tuesday it was valued

at $7.2 billion in its latest funding round - the third capital

raise for the U.S. enterprise AI search startup in less than two

years.

The round marks a nearly 57% jump in valuation for Glean,

underscoring strong investor appetite for startups leveraging AI

use cases. In the previous funding in September, the company's

valuation had more than doubled in just over six months.

Businesses and governments worldwide are rushing to adopt

artificial intelligence, with applications ranging from

enterprise productivity and drug discovery to infrastructure and

beyond.

Palo Alto, California-based Glean raised $150 million in a

Series F funding round led by asset manager Wellington

Management and other new investors, including Khosla Ventures.

The company was founded in 2019 by a team of former Google

search engineers. It uses AI assistants and large language

models to generate personalized answers to queries.

Earlier this year, the company rolled out its Glean Agents

offering, which allows businesses to use AI to automate

operations. It is on track to support 1 billion agent actions by

the end of the year, the company said.

Industry leaders have hailed AI-based agents as a

transformative-use case of the technology. Microsoft ( MSFT )

CEO Satya Nadella has also suggested that the agents will

disrupt how we use software-as-a-service, a business model that

has long been the staple of software startups.

The latest investment will help Glean to enhance its product

offerings and bolster international presence, the company said.

Glean, which surpassed $100 million in annual recurring

revenue in its last fiscal year, said it was opening a new San

Francisco office to support its growth.

The company counts TIME, Reddit, Booking.com and many other

big names among its customers.

(Reporting by Ateev Bhandari and Arasu Kannagi Basil in

Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)