Funding will be used to further capitalize on rapidly growing automation market, accelerating global expansion and extending product leadership, as well as fuel acquisitions like application connector firm, RailsData
Workato, the leader in enterprise automation, announced $200 million in Series E funding led by Battery Ventures, with equal participation from Insight Partners, Altimeter Capital and Tiger Global. Geodesic Capital and Redpoint Ventures also participated in this round of financing. The new funding values Workato at $5.7 billion and comes just nine months after its $110 million Series D. Workato has raised over $420 million in total funding to date.
“Automation exists to enable and empower end users, make organizations adaptable, and keep the lights on all the time”
The investment arrives at a time of rapid growth for Workato and the automation market as a whole, as enterprises recognize the urgent need to increase their agility, innovation and efficiency against a backdrop of transformation and change. The pandemic has driven an even greater need for business excellence, and companies have responded by automating core workflows, seeking out low-code tools that empower employees to work quickly and autonomously.
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“Businesses are still struggling to achieve true transformation because RPA and integration tools cannot scale to address the needs of enterprises today,” said Vijay Tella, Workato CEO and Co-founder. “Workato’s enterprise automation platform, a single platform for automation and integration that can be used by both Business and IT, addresses the challenges companies face when trying to automate at scale, enabling enterprises to achieve the speed and agility necessary for organizational transformation. We’re excited to put this new round of funding to work for our customers as they continue to push the boundaries of innovation.”
Historically, companies have been forced to deploy a variety of integration and automation tools to optimize their processes at the data, process, API and UX levels. This model is highly inefficient, and companies have flocked to Workato because it provides all of these capabilities in a single, low-code platform that allows business users and IT departments to collaborate on process automation.
More than 11,000 customers now use Workato’s enterprise automation platform to automate their critical business processes. In the past 12 months, Workato has:
- More than doubled new ARR, with growth accelerating every quarter
- Nearly doubled the customer base with additions like Stitch Fix, Gitlab, NYU, Nokia, Lucid Motors, joining Broadcom, Toast, and many others
- More than tripled the growth in business processes automated by customers and quadrupled the workload per customer
- Expanded in EMEA with a new GDPR-compliant data center in Frankfurt
- Acquired RailsData to create an application connector factory, increasing the number of application connectors by over 10x in the next few years
- More than doubled employee headcount
- Been recognized as a leader in Gartner’s Enterprise iPaaS Magic Quadrant for the fourth year in a row – with the largest positive movement of any leader this year
- Hosted its first user conference, Workato Automate, which attracted more than 12,000 participants
- Been named to the Forbes Cloud 100, the definitive ranking of the top 100 private cloud companies in the world
- Been recognized in the Deloitte Fast 500 as one of the top 100 fastest growing companies globally
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Workato’s latest funding will be used to further accelerate the company’s product roadmap and leadership in enterprise automation, in addition to continuing to drive the integration-led automation movement. Workato, already a leader in connecting and integrating applications, is launching the “10,000 Connector Initiative” with the acquisition of RailsData, which specializes in the connectivity of applications, databases, and devices using APIs. With thousands of applications used by an enterprise, connectivity is critical to achieving automation at scale.
The round will also be used to aid Workato’s further expansion in the U.S., EMEA and APAC. This global expansion includes opening additional data centers in APAC, adding support for regional languages, and accelerating the product roadmap to address the needs of local regions. A key hire made in response to Workato’s strong growth and expansion plans in Europe is that of Robert Ekstrom, who joins Workato as VP & GM EMEA. Ekstrom previously held management roles at leading multinationals including Dell, EMC and Xerox and most recently was VP & GM at Blue Prism, an enterprise intelligent automation vendor.
“Since leading Workato’s Series B in 2018, we’ve been excited to see the steady growth of usage among Workato’s customers—many of them leaders in their respective industries—and Workato’s solidifying position as a leader in the automation market, one of the fastest-growing sectors in technology,” said Neeraj Agrawal, a general partner at Battery Ventures. “We’ve had a front-row seat to watch Workato truly transform many of its customers’ businesses, which is one reason why we and other existing investors in the company are excited to lead this new funding round.”
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“The events of the past 10 months have made operational excellence more critical than ever, and businesses understand that enterprise automation is a cornerstone to achieving the heightened agility, innovation and performance they need to succeed in any environment,” said Pauline Yang, partner, Altimeter Capital. “The market for automation products will only continue to expand, and we believe that Workato has the best technology, partnerships and leadership team in place to capitalize on this exciting opportunity.”
Workato’s customers are supported by a thriving and growing community of 100,000 users who create and share automation “recipes” for common business processes that can then be reused by other customers. As more customers join the platform, they create more recipes which increases the utility of the platform, attracting even more users in a virtuous cycle that continuously drives Workato’s growth.
“Automation exists to enable and empower end users, make organizations adaptable, and keep the lights on all the time,” said Andy Nallappan, CTO and Head of Software Business Operations at Broadcom. “Back in the day, automation was a complicated effort that required a lot of technology, infrastructure, processes, and tools. But now, it’s as simple as a recipe thanks to Workato. Everyone can use it. It can become part of the team, the basis of an automation culture. Workato makes automation much more successful and frictionless.”
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