Last year, Gartner found that Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the fastest growing category in business software. So perhaps it should come as no surprise that UIPath, one of the leading startups in space, today announced a $ 225 million E Series with a $ 10.2 billion valuation.
Alkeon Capital led the round with the help of Accel, Coatue, Dragoneer, IVP, Madrona Venture Group, Sequoia Capital, Tencent, Tiger Global, Wellington and T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. Today's investment brings the total raised to $ 1.255 billion, according to Crunchbase data.
It is worth noting that the presence of institutional investors such as Wellington is often a signal that a company may think it will go public at some point. CFO Ashim Gupta has not shied away from a future IPO, stating that co-founder and CEO Daniel Dines has discussed the idea in recent months and what it would take to become a public company.
"We are evaluating the conditions of the market and I would not say that this is vague, but we have not chosen a day that says that we will become public. We are really in the mentality that says that we should be prepared when the market is ready, and I would not be surprised if in the next 12-18 months, "he said.
One of the factors that attracts investor interest so much is its growth rate, which according to Gupta continues on an upward trajectory, even during the pandemic as companies look for ways to automate. In fact, he reports that recurring revenue has gone from $ 100 to $ 400 million in the past 24 months.
RPA helps companies add a level of automation to manual legacy processes, bringing modernization without having to throw away existing systems. This approach appeals to many companies unwilling to rip and replace to get some of the benefits of digital transformation. The pandemic has done nothing but push this delicate technology to the fore as companies seek ways to automate faster.
The company raised some eyebrows in the fall when it announced that it would lay off 400 employees in just 6 months after raising $ 568 million on a $ 7 billion valuation, but Gupta said the layoffs represented a kind of reset for the company. after it had grown rapidly in the previous two years.
"From 2017 to 2019, we have invested in many different areas. I think in October, as we thought it, we really started to take a break when we became more confident in our strategy and reevaluated the areas that we wanted to reduce and that led those layoff decisions in October.
As for why the startup needs all that money, Gupta says in a growing market, it is spending to get as much market share as possible and that requires a lot of investment. It also cannot hurt to have a lot of money in the bank as a hedge against economic uncertainty during the pandemic. Gupta notes that in the coming months UIPath could also examine strategic acquisitions to fill holes in the product roadmap more quickly.
While the company doesn't plan to go through the kind of growth it has gone through in 2017 and 2018, it will continue to hire, and Gupta says the leadership team is committed to building a diverse team at all levels of the organization. "We want to have the best people, but we really believe that having the best people and the best team means that diversity has to be part of it," he said.
The company was founded in 2005 in Bucharest by outsourcing libraries and automation software. In 2015, he started the RPA pivot and has since grown by leaps and bounds. When we talked to the startup in September 2018 about her $ 225 million Series C investment (which eventually rose to $ 265 million), she had 1800 customers. Today it has 7000 and growing.