Page 20 - bne_August 2020_20200810

20 I Companies & Markets bne August 2020
bne:Tech
$225mn funding values Romanian RPA unicorn UiPath at over $10bn
Iulian Ernst in Bucharest
UiPath, the enterprise Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software company founded by Romanian entrepreneurs Daniel Dines and Marius Tirca, has closed a $225mn series E funding round, which put its value at $10.2bn.
The funding and the new valuation, about $3bn higher than the previous round, were accelerated by the COVID-19 crisis, during which demand for software and automation robots exploded, according to Dines.
The new funding brings its total raised to over $1.2bn.
The series E investment round was led by Alkeon Capital Investment Fund. Accel, Coatue, Dragoneer, IVP, Madrona Venture Group, Sequoia Capital, Tencent, Tiger Global, Wellington and T. Rowe Price Associates Inc. also participated in the financing.
The last round took place in April 2019 and valued the company at $7bn.
Dines says the new funding will be used to scale UiPath’s platform and deepen its investments in “AI-powered
innovation” as it expands its cloud software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings. The round will also likely lay the groundwork for future strategic deals, following UiPath’s acquisition of startups StepShot and ProcessGold last October.
The company has announced that it is now accelerating
its plans for an initial public offering (IPO) in the light of COVID-19. Dines announced in February that the company was considering an IPO.
"We were thinking of a listing at the end of 2021 or 2022, but COVID-19 has accelerated our plans," Allison Webster, a UiPath spokeswoman, told Bloomberg.
The company announced that it has reached recurring annual revenues of over $400mn, compared to $100mn previously.
Founded in Romania in 2005 under the name DeskOver and renamed UiPath in 2015, the company has added the CIA, the US Navy, McDonald's Corp, Duracell and Swiss Re among its clients. In 2018, it became the first startup founded in Romania to acquire unicorn status (over $1bn valuation).
Bank of Lithuania to become first eurozone
bank to issue digital coin
bne IntelliNews
The Bank of Lithuania is preparing to issue a digital coin, a first for a central bank in the eurozone, Reuters reported on July 2.
The Lithuanian central bank was one of many to be looking at how they might issue their own digital currencies as the use of cash declines – a process speeded up by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
“No one in the central bank community was thinking about digital currency seriously before we realised that there is a legitimate threat that someone else will take our space ...
www.bne.eu
We need to provide society with what it wants” said the bank’s deputy governor Marius Jurgilas, as quoted by Reuters.
Jurgilas told the newswire that 24,000 digital tokens called “LBCOINs” that are based on blockchain technology will go on pre-sale in the second week of July.
The LBCOIN is very similar to what is known as a central bank digital currency (CBDC), or traditional money in digital form, Jurgilas added. This differs from the more complex cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.