Celonis secures €1B at a valuation of €13B to help businesses resolve process problems

New York and Munich-based Celonis, a firm that provides an execution management system to help companies run their business processes, announced on Tuesday, August 23, that it has raised an additional $1B (approximately €1B) in a funding round to accelerate its position to help customers thrive in challenging economic environments.

This $1B includes a $400M Series D extension equity raise, at a post-money valuation of nearly $13B (approximately €13B), and access to a $600M credit facility arrangement through a syndicate of top international banks.

In June 2021, Celonis raised $1B in a Series D round at a valuation of $11B. The round was followed by a Series C financing of $290M in November 2019. Prior to that, the company raised Series B funding of $50M in June 2018 and $27.5M in Series A in June 2016.

Investors supporting Celonis

The Series D extension round was led by the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and includes new blue-chip investors Activant Capital, a fund advised by Neuberger Berman, Alta Park Capital, and Commonfund Capital. 

Existing investors Arena Holdings, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., Franklin Templeton, Durable Capital Partners LP, TCV, 83North, Accel Partners, and Sator Grove also participated in this round.

The Celonis five-year $500M line of credit is expandable to $600M and is the largest syndicated bank recurring revenue revolving credit facility of its kind. This debt facility was led by KeyBanc Capital Markets, with Goldman Sachs, HSBC Ventures, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc., Citibank, and Deutsche Bank acting as joint lead arrangers. 

Lenders in the syndicate also included RBC Capital Markets, Silicon Valley Bank, SMBC, Citizens, MUFG, and Bank of America.

Capital utilisation

Celonis says it will use these additional funds to invest in product innovation, drive adoption with Global 2000 customers, expand market potential with acquisition investments, as well as deepen penetration with ecosystem partners.

Bastian Nominacher, co-CEO and co-founder of Celonis, says, “With an additional $1B in liquidity, Celonis will have maximum flexibility to aggressively innovate, capitalise on new market opportunities and extend our market leadership.”

Alex Rinke, co-CEO and co-founder of Celonis, adds, “There is a ‘behind-the-scenes secret’ that Celonis is equally effective in driving top and bottom line value in both booming and challenging economies. We have never experienced more urgency from customers to use Celonis to hunt down and fix the kind of process problems that can yield tens to hundreds of millions in cash and time savings.”

With more than 2,500 business installations throughout the globe, Celonis claims to have yet another record-breaking year of growth. 

Celonis – Everything you need to know

According to a 2021 benchmarking research report from Celonis, many common process problems were discovered by process mining. These problems have the following effects on a $5B business company: 

• Processing 73 per cent of invoices manually results in increased operating costs of $41M
• 56 per cent of client orders require manual processing, costing $64M in avoidable expenses
• Delays in delivery from suppliers account for 54 per cent of all expenditures, or $396M
• 1.5 per cent of bills are paid twice, resulting in an average capital loss of $172M.

Celonis says, even the best-run companies have the potential to save millions or even billions of dollars over time by solving these kinds of issues. There are countless hidden process inefficiencies in every division, organisation, and sector of the economy. And because the underlying ERP, SCM, and CRM systems are inflexible and complicated, it is exceedingly difficult, and occasionally impossible, to discover these issues using conventional methods.

Celonis invented process mining and its execution management system as a solution to this issue, modernising process optimisation. The Celonis system searches corporate systems for hidden process issues and fixes them using data, intelligence, and automated actions. 

Utilising Celonis, businesses may reduce the years it takes to uncover a process problem to just a few hours. Once an issue with a process has been identified, Celonis assists clients in automatically resolving it without modifying the underlying ERP, SCM, or CRM system.

The company was founded in 2011 by Alexander Rinke, Bastian Nominacher and Martin Klenk. Currently, more than 250 consulting and technology partners, including IBM, Accenture, PWC, KPMG, and ServiceNow, have formed strategic alliances with Celonis. These companies are using Celonis both internally and embedded within their own service and technology offerings.

Celonis has also expanded its capabilities and market impact with a number of strategic acquisitions, including Integromat (now Make), Lenses.io, and Process Analytics Factory.