If you work at an enterprise company, you could spend hours on monotonous tasks — or you could get a robot to do it. Robotic Process Automation company UiPath raised $153 million to do just that.
These aren’t the robots you might be imagining. They’re “software robots,” which perform manual tasks like accounting, supply chain and marketing, and are trained by business users.
Our software looks at a screen much like a human — with eyes — and can handle changes in layout and even interpret language."
“Our software looks at a screen much like a human — with eyes — and can handle changes in layout and even interpret language,” said CMO Bobby Patrick. “More than a decade of development went into Computer Vision before the robots were able to achieve today's 100 percent accuracy.”
The company’s Series B round was led by Accel, with participation from new investors CapitalG and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, bringing its total amount raised to $183 million and its valuation to $1.1 billion.
“Automation allows organizations to harness the innate strengths of their resources — delegating repetitive, rules-based and monotonous tasks to robots, while freeing up people for the strategic, creative and interpersonal work that they’re ultimately best suited for,” said Patrick.
Before moving its headquarters to New York, the company set up shop in Bucharest, Romania, where it was founded by Dines and Marius Tîrcă. It was launched in 2015 and has experienced rapid growth ever since — especially in the past year, when its enterprise customer base grew from 100 to more than 700.
“Every company is working to go digital in their business and RPA is proving to offer the fastest implementation, real and immediate outcomes, and rapid payback,” said Patrick.
The company currently employees 590 people in offices across 14 different countries, and this funding will help it grow even further. This quarter, UiPath plans to expand to Amsterdam, Houston, Munich, Paris, Seattle, Seoul and Washington D.C.
As part of the deal, Rich Wong of Accel will join partner Luciana Lixandru on the company’s board of directors.
