RPA vendors in double funding worth over $500m

Automation firms UiPath and Automation Anywhere close out their funding rounds with $265m and $300m respectively

Robotic process automation (RPA) firms UiPath and Automation Anywhere raised over half a billion dollars between them in their respective series funding rounds this week.

UiPath added an extension to the first closing of its Series C round, raising a total of $265m (£206m). The company has raised a total of $448m and claims to be valued at at $3bn.

The round was led by venture capital houses IVP, Madrona Venture Group and Meritech Capital. The extension of the round was created by allowing UiPath employees to buy shares in the company at the same price as investors in the round.

Daniel Dines, UiPath CEO and co-founder, stated: "UiPath has had many funding options and I believe we have selected the investors that align best with our culture and beliefs.

"I am humbled as the syndicate of unquestionably top-tier venture capital firms who believe in UiPath and support our future.

"Additionally, it is a core UiPath principle to share the success of the company in a meaningful way with our hard-working and long-time employees and we were excited to be able to extend the opportunity, at their personal choice, to realise partial liquidity in this round."

Automation Anywhere also had an extension to its Series A funding round, which saw it add $300m from Softbank Vision Fund to the $250m it raised in July.

Founded in 2003, the US-based company provides an RPA platform to enterprise customers.

Mihir Shukla, CEO of Automation Anywhere, said that RPA is the most "pervasive and frictionless" way to deliver artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to enterprise organisations.

"With this additional capital, we are in a position to do far more than any other provider," he stated.

"We will not only continue to deliver the most advanced RPA to the market, but we will help bring AI to millions.

"Like the introduction of the PC, we see a world where every office employee will work alongside digital workers, amplifying human contributions.

"Today, employees must know how to use a PC and very soon employees will have to know how to build a bot."