Robotic Automation Specialist Raises $250MRobotic Automation Specialist Raises $250M

Robotic process automation (RPA) specialist Automation Anywhere, which includes the likes of AT&T and Juniper among its customers, has raised US$250 million in a Series A round of funding that values the company at $1.8 billion.

The staggering funding round was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, with General Atlantic and World Innovation Lab (WiL) also pitching in.

The 14-year-old San Jose, Calif.-based firm, led by CEO and co-founder Mihir Shukla, specializes in the development of machine learning-enabled bots that can be deployed either on-premises or in the cloud to automate business processes. It claims to already have more than 1,000 customers that are developing "intelligent digital workforces" based on its software platform and applications, which incorporate "cognitive capabilities" and analytics.

Those customers include AT&T, Cisco Systems, Comcast, Dell EMC, Juniper Networks and Wipro.

AT&T's technology and operations automation team has been using the vendor's software to develop bots that "handle routine, time-consuming duties like creating engineering work orders or updating systems for network-boosting activities," the operator explained in an October 2016 blog post on its website.

Juniper, meanwhile, has used Automation Anywhere's platform to automate the invoice management and billing portal processes for its six largest customers, improving accuracy by 100%, reducing manual labor requirements by 33% and improving cash collection cycle times by two days, among other benefits.

Juniper, of course, has been developing bots of its own to further its "self-driving network" concept, including applications that translate spoken tasks into network processes. (See Automation Brings Rise of the Juniper Bots.)

Automation Anywhere says it will use the funds to expand internationally and fuel product development.