Robots are here to stay. The more you learn about their potential, the faster it’ll help your business to grow. And this is exactly what this Romania-born company UiPath has been doing. It develops robotic process automation and artificial intelligence software. In a recent development, the company has announced that it has raised $750M (approx €623.2M) in its Series F round of funding at a valuation of $35B (approx €29B).
Investors in this round
The round was co-led by existing investors Alkeon Capital and Coatue. While existing investors also participated in this round including Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, IVP, Sequoia, Tiger Global, and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc.
Abhi Arun, Managing Partner at Alkeon Capital, says, “Automation has become a strategic imperative that is fundamentally changing the way organisations operate. We are excited to co-lead this round of funding, as well as continue to team up with the UiPath team during an important phase for the company.”
What does UiPath aim to achieve?
UiPath was founded in 2005 as a 10-people team based in Bucharest, led by Daniel Dines. Initially, it outsourced automation libraries and software to some of the world’s biggest companies.
Marius Tîrcă joined the company in 2004 as a software engineer, according to his Linkedin profile. He is currently the co-founder & CTO of UiPath.
UiPath is on a mission to unlock human creativity and ingenuity by enabling the fully automated enterprise and empowering workers through automation.
“Bill Gates used to talk at Microsoft about a computer in every home. I want a robot for every person,” says Daniel Dines.
The company designs and develops robotic process automation software. It offers foolproof development tools, automation of intricate processes, enhanced control, cloud and on-premise deployment, robust governance, and multiple robots on a single virtual machine.
The company moved its headquarters to New York in 2017 so that it could be closer to its international customer base.
Currently based in New York, the company claims it Automation Platform is designed to transform the way humans work, providing customers with a vast set of capabilities to discover automation opportunities and build, manage, run, engage, measure, and govern automation across departments within an organisation.
What is automation and how does it help?
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the technology that allows anyone to configure computer software, or a “robot” to emulate and integrate the actions of a human interacting within digital systems to execute a business process.
RPA robots utilise the user interface to capture data and manipulate applications just like humans do. They interpret, trigger responses, and communicate with other systems in order to perform a vast variety of repetitive tasks. Also, an RPA software robot never sleeps and makes zero mistakes.
According to UiPath, RPA robots are capable of mimicking many – if not all – human user actions. They log into applications, move files and folders, copy and paste data, fill in forms, extract structured and semi-structured data from documents, scrape browsers, and more.
Taking the IPO Path
Last year, in December, the company announced that it has submitted a draft registration statement on a confidential basis to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) for a proposed public offering of its Class A common stock.
“The number of shares of Class A common stock to be sold and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. UiPath intends to commence the public offering following completion of the SEC review process, subject to market and other conditions,” says UiPath in a statement.
