Leapwork, a Copenhagen-based automation software provider for the enterprise, announced today that it has secured $28 million in Series B funding from professional services firm KKR and Salesforce Ventures, the venture capital arm of Salesforce. This round brings Leapwork’s total funding to date to $38 million.
The company will use this financing to further develop its platform and expand its partnerships with software and technology vendors, industry analysts, clients, and thought leaders. According to Leapwork’s CEO Anders Lassen, the investment accelerates their ability to “bring intelligent automation to even more companies worldwide by expanding our partner network and deepening our relationships.”
The news marks a major milestone for Leapwork—a company whose vision is to build an enterprise automation platform that allows “anyone with minimal technical knowledge” to create automated workflows quickly and seamlessly. With the help of KKR & Salesforce Ventures’ significant investments, Leapwork can now focus on scaling its platform and driving broader adoption of intelligent automation.
Copenhagen-based Leapwork lands $62M Series B co-led by KKR and Salesforce Ventures
Copenhagen-based no-code automation platform Leapwork announced today that it has raised $62 million in a Series B round co-led by KKR and Salesforce Ventures.
This news comes after the company secured $10 million in Series A funding in February 2020. The funding will be used to further develop its automation platform and to expand its global team.
Overview of Leapwork
Leapwork is an automation software provider with various capabilities, including creating automated workflows using a no-code drag-and-drop interface. The company was founded in 2015 to enable business users to take control of their automation initiatives without relying on IT personnel or writing code. Since then, the company has grown its user base significantly, with over 2 million users worldwide.
Founded by Lars Menné Madsen and Esben Tuman Smeckendorff, Leapwork offers an integrated centralized platform for businesses to automate manual processes, streamline operations and accelerate innovation. Through its platform companies can eliminate tedious manual processes and free up resources for higher value tasks allowing them to focus on customer delight and delivering growth faster.
In April 2021, KKR and Salesforce Ventures invested USD 60 million into Leapwork in Series A funding. With this funding, the company plans to ramp up engineering talent in Scandinavia and continue its rapid growth worldwide. Additionally, they plan to use the funds to develop new products to help their enterprise customers increase automation efficiency at scale while improving productivity and saving millions in operational expenses.
Overview of KKR and Salesforce Ventures
KKR & Co. Inc. is a leading global investment firm in private equity, energy, infrastructure, real estate, and credit markets. Founded in 1976, the firm has a long history of investing to help companies and their employees succeed and grow. KKR is one of the world’s largest independent alternative asset managers with approximately $496 billion of assets under management as of December 31, 2020 (BUM).
Salesforce Ventures is a strategic venture capital arm of Salesforce. Since 2009 they have invested in over 600 cloud-based start-ups that integrate or complement the Salesforce platform and align with their corporate vision of connecting customers, partners and employees through innovative technologies. In addition, they provide funding to help catalyze these companies’ potential – unlocking company growth while creating opportunities for innovation everywhere they invest. As of March 2021, Salesforce Ventures has invested over $2 billion into startups across 15 countries worldwide.
Investment Details
Copenhagen-based automation platform, Leapwork, recently announced that it has secured $62M in a Series B round of funding. The round was co-led by KKR and Salesforce Ventures, with participation from existing investors Sunstone and SEED Capital Denmark. This brings Leapwork’s total funding to date to $78.5 million.
Let’s take a closer look at the details of this investment.
Amount of Investment
KKR and Salesforce Ventures have jointly invested $36 million in Leapwork, an automation software firm that allows companies to speed up manual processes. “The decision to invest was driven by our assessment of the market opportunity Leapwork is addressing and its differentiated technology platform,” commented Hari Nair, Partner at KKR.
Leapwork will use the investment capital to expand their global presence into new markets and countries while investing its product advancements. Co-founder and CEO Claus Hasselgreen has praised the spirit of collaboration with both investors, saying “Our commitment to provide ground-breaking automation capabilities across industries has found strong support from our investors KKR and Salesforce Ventures.”
This round is part of a larger Series C funding which also saw investment from HPE Growth Capital, Microsoft Ventures, and existing investors Notion Capital and Hyper Growth VC. This brings Leapwork’s total funding raised to $62 million since its launch.
Series B Funding
Series B funding for Leapwork, a Denmark-based automation platform provider, has been completed in a round led by growth investors KKR and Salesforce Ventures with participation from existing investors Northzone and ByFounders.
The Series B round of $40 million brings the total capital raised by the company to more than $51 million. According to Leapwork, this series of funding will be used to fuel its expanding international expansion, allowing the company to better meet customer demands across Europe and beyond.
The funds will also be leveraged towards advancing product development and continuing operations of its Copenhagen headquarters. As a result of this investment, Gregory McKee at KKR will join the board of directors at Leapwork while Jai Das from Salesforce Ventures joins as an observer member. This Series B follows close on the heels of two very successful years for Leapwork since its Series A in 2018 tripled the size of its customer base over the previous year.
Leapwork is known for their automation platform that uses AI machine learning technology combined with intuitive graphical drag-and-drop user interfaces to create automated processes for any business process across application layers. The platform also has out-of-the-box integration with enterprise applications like SAP, Salesforce and Microsoft Office making it easier for users to automate manual tasks across these applications.
Companies Involved
KKR & Co., Inc. and Salesforce Ventures, the corporate investment group of Salesforce, have recently invested Leapwork, a Copenhagen-based software firm that automates repetitive manual test and development processes. This venture supports Leapwork’s expansion and corporate development initiatives.
KKR is a global asset manager with world-class private equity, fixed income and public markets expertise. The company has made more than 145 investments across multiple sectors over the past 35 years. Salesforce Ventures will leverage its relationships, experience and strategic advice to help newer companies succeed in their industry.
With these investments, Highgate Capital joins existing investors including Sunstone Capital; Accel; Trifork and individual investor Giso Wellmer (previously COO at GE Healthcare). In addition, Leapwork also announced several key executive hires to strengthen its leadership team: CEO Christian Visti Larsen (co-founder of Falkon Ventures and co-founder & former CEO of Podio), VP of Customer SuccessHans Juul Andersen (previously Director of Customer Success at Sitecore) and SVP of Products Kenneth Meyer Grønbech (previously CTO at Utopia Solutions).
This venture highlights the commitment from KKR and Salesforce Ventures to invest in innovative technology companies that are working towards solving complex challenges businesses face today.
Impact of the Investment
The investment of KKR and Salesforce Ventures into Copenhagen-based Leapwork will majorly impact the automation arena. This $62M Series B will provide the funding for Leapwork to develop and expand its automation platform, which is expected to improve efficiency and productivity.
This investment also shines a light on the potential of automation to capture data and market patterns, a growing trend in the business world.
Expansion of Leapwork
The agreement between KKR and Salesforce Ventures marks an exciting step forward for Leapwork, which provides an intelligent automation platform that enables businesses to modernize operations through robotic process automation (RPA). This investment will fuel the company’s growth and allow the company to further expand its presence in the Nordic region.
This investment is also a great example of both KKR and Salesforce Ventures’ commitment to keeping up with the latest trends in innovation. Both firms have invested in several leading software organizations, such as Sprinklr, JFrog, AppDynamics, and VMware. The capital infusion from these two firms will enable Leapwork to strengthen its RPA and Robotic Desktop Automation (RDA) capabilities while aiding its development of a more comprehensive platform.
With this investment, Leapwork is expected to expand its operations by hiring more employees, diversifying its offerings through acquisitions and working towards providing greater business agility across organizations. Additionally, it’s possible that this could potentially lead to other investment opportunities down the line. By investing in Leapwork’s intelligent automation platform, KKR and Salesforce Ventures show their interest in growing Leapwork for long-term success.
Benefits for KKR and Salesforce Ventures
KKR and Salesforce Ventures each made a significant investment in Leapwork, ranging from $100 million to $150 million. This sizable cash infusion is expected to help the automation pioneer create 80-100 new jobs in the U.S., with a priority for hiring veterans. In addition, it will not only help grow the company and re-energize its customer base by introducing new products and features that make their experience even better.
The financial support received from KKR and Salesforce Ventures will enable Leapwork to fast track investments in strategic initiatives such as product development, geographic expansion and customer acquisition while maintaining its agility of operations. This will further the long-term success of the company.
Additionally, both KKR and Salesforce are renowned tech investors with strong networks across Europe, North America and Asia Pacific – enabling Leapwork to tap into an extensive pool of tech influencers and opinion makers who can provide valuable insights into customer needs as well as provide collaborative opportunities for joint innovation projects to occur between Leapwork’s customers and partners.
Furthermore, their reputation for being “longterm” investors means that both KKR and Salesforce are more likely to stick around during times of uncertainty than those viewed as “short-term” investors who tend to pursue quick flips rather than take a more patient approach. In sum, these investments provide a strong endorsement from experienced financial partners whose insight you can leverage beyond just capital injection – ultimately providing value for years to come for both parties involved.
Conclusion
In conclusion, KKR and Salesforce Ventures have invested in Leapwork, a Copenhagen-based automation platform for software development. By joining forces with KKR and Salesforce Ventures, Leapwork has secured resources to accelerate its expansion into the US market, recruit additional engineers, and appear on Google Cloud Platform.
This deal demonstrates the potential for automation technology to revolutionize the software development industry. By streamlining operations and improving productivity, automation technology creates opportunities for developers to focus on value-adding tasks instead of tedious low-level work. With the addition of KKR and Salesforce Ventures’ strategic backing, Leapwork will likely lead the way in this rapidly growing field of automation solutions.
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