Romania founded a company – UiPath – specialized in the latest technology in robotic process automation (RPA) platform has raised $225 million in a series C round funding led by Capital G and by Sequoia Capital, world media reported. Accel, the old investor and supporter of UiPath, which led both Series A and B rounds, also participated in this round, UiPath announced.
With this round of investment, this Romanian company is valued at $3billion, tripling its value in just six months, which is reportedly the highest rating recorded in the history of IT company launched from Romania.
For now, the UiPath plans to use these funds to support its accelerating product development, deepen its ecosystem of partnerships to deliver complementary AI-enabled solutions, broaden the role of RPA in the enterprise process automation initiatives and invest acquisition opportunities.
“We are delighted by the strong support of our customers, partners and investors toward making this future of automation a reality. UiPath is driven by the incredible potential for our platform to be the gateway to transform our customers’ digital business operations with machine learning and AI”, said Daniel Dines, CEO and founder of UiPath.
For Carl Eschenbach, Partner at Sequoia, UiPath is the ultimate solution to the pain with digital transformation of the back-end systems that every company is looking to solve.
“Every company is looking to drive a digital transformation of their back-end systems, and UiPath is solving that pain point through AI-powered automation. Daniel and his team have built a technology platform that will drive efficiencies and deliver tangible ROI for businesses. We are thrilled to partner with UiPath to help accelerate their already impressive growth”, says Eschenbach.
Laela Sturdy, Partner at CapitalG said to be “thrilled” to cooperate with UiPath and that they “strongly believe that RPA is a primary route for organizations to benefit from Artificial Intelligence”.
“CapitalG is delighted to deepen its commitment to UiPath. We firmly believe that RPA is the main route through which organizations will benefit from AI, and UiPath proves this potential through unrivaled growth and incredible impact on customers. We are convinced that our long-term partnership with UiPath will facilitate access to this transforming technology to companies around the world”, says Sturdy.
On that same note (the importance of the RPA and its profitability), one of the most influential media, Wall Street Journal(WSJ), reporting on the excellent success of UiPath, estimates that the AI market will grow to almost $1.1 billion in revenue this year from $325 million in 2016, stating that this “soaring valuations” of this company is not solely to the company’s solutions, but also due to the “buzz over artificial intelligence, or AI” and “because chief information officers can show their bosses real cost savings by using bots to complete clerical tasks faster, more cheaply and with lower error rates”.
With this optimistic estimation made by such an influential media as the WSJ, Daniel Dines’ plan for 2019 – UiPath to receive $600 million in revenue – might be very realistic, rather than surprising.
Founded in 2005 by Dines, UiPath is headquartered in New York, with branches in 14 countries throughout North America, Europe and Asia. According to the company’s date, UiPath has over 1.800 customers using RPA services and over 200.000 users around the world. American Red Cross, BMW group, Carlsberg, NASA, Pandora, Japan Airlines are just a few to mention. Besides Accel, Capital G and Sequoia Capital, UiPath so far has been also funded and supported by Earlybird’s Digital East Fund, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, Credo Ventures, Seedcamp and Sequoia.
As reported by the company, UiPath expects to end 2018 with more than 1,700 employees, a three-fold increase in 12 months, with operations in 30 offices across 16 countries.