EWDN: Yet another Ukrainian-founded unicorn: airSlate raises more than $50mn in the US
The Boston-based business automation software publisher airSlate has raised $50mn giving it a valuation of $1.25bn and making it the latest Ukrainian-born unicorn.
By East West Digital News in Kyiv
June 17, 2022
airSlate (formerly known as pdfFiller), a Boston-based business automation software publisher, announced it secured $51.5mn in a deal that values airSlate at $1.25bn on June 16, East West Digital News reports.
The equity round was led by G Squared with participation from UiPath Ventures, the brand-new venture arm of the enterprise automation software company.
“UiPath Ventures invests in companies that impact the world around us and further our purpose of accelerating human achievement. airSlate falls firmly into that category,” said Vijay Khanna, chief corporate development officer at UiPath.
Touting itself as a “no-code innovation leader,” airSlate says it gives teams “the power to automate any part of [their] business using a single, no-code, easy-to-configure solution.” Its solutions are compliant with “industry-leading security and compliance standards to keep all important data safe and secure.” The company claims 900,000 customers and 100mn users worldwide.
“Now more than ever, we see huge demand from organisations of all sizes that need the agility and efficiency of the no-code airSlate platform to drive their business. This partnership with UiPath affirms the vision behind airSlate while exposing our solution to a broader enterprise market. The no-code revolution is only beginning, and partnerships like this will help power our team to innovate even more quickly, providing seamless business automation, and best-in-class functionality for our customers,” airSlate CEO Borya Shakhnovich said in a press release.
airSlate’s funding round includes a “strategic partnership” with UiPath. Both companies “believe there is a significant opportunity to remove mundane work and complement workers in small businesses with software robots that can help them both better serve customers and improve employee happiness.” This partnership will “support the UiPath mission to build a new layer in the enterprise IT stack – the automation layer that will sit above existing systems and infrastructure and complete mundane work that is done by humans,” according to airSlate. As previously reported by Ukraine Digital News, pdfFiller was co-founded in 2007 by Ukrainian entrepreneur Shakhnovich. pdfFiller is now just one of the company’s products.
In 2019, airSlate raised a $30mn round from investment firm General Catalyst (USA) and Horizon Capital (Ukraine). In January 2021, the company closed a $40mn Series B round from three major US funds – General Catalyst, HighSage Ventures and Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital.
There is a range of Ukrainian-founded unicorns in the USA, and even two decacorns – Grammarly and GitLab – as reported by Ukraine Digital News.
This article first appeared in East-West Digital News (EWDN), a bne IntelliNews partner publication.
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