A Silicon Valley automation technology startup says it is now worth $6.8 billion after a second round of fundraising brought in $290 million.
San Jose-based Automation Anywhere said the funding would accelerate its efforts to improve collaboration between humans and robots. The company aims to develop robotic process automation, or RPA, that enables software bots to perform repetitive or mundane tasks — and free human workers to address "higher-order business challenges.”
The company, citing a report from consulting firm Gartner, said RPA is the world’s fastest-growing category of enterprise software.
"Never before has there been such a transformative shift in the way we work, with artificially intelligent software bots changing how people, processes and technology interact for productivity gains,” Mihir Shukla, the company’s co-founder and CEO, said in a statement.
The series B fundraising round was led by Salesforce Ventures, with previous investors SoftBank Investment Advisers and Goldman Sachs contributing additional funding. The company’s initial campaign raised $550 million last year.
Automation Anywhere also said it launched a service on enterprise cloud marketplace Salesforce AppExchange that provides pre-built software bots to Salesforce users worldwide.
"We’re excited to extend our partnership with Automation Anywhere to help more customers automate their end-to-end business processes and accelerate their digital transformation journeys,” said Salesforce Service Cloud general manager and executive vice president Bill Patterson.
