Leapwork, a Copenhagen-based platform for process automation, has secured Denmark's largest ever Series B financing round. It announced a $62million raise co-led and led by KKR Ventures and Salesforce Ventures. Existing investors DN Capital, Headline, and Headline are also participating.
It also disclosed today that its post-money value now stands at $312M.
In 2019, the startup, founded in 2015 with no code, raised a $10M Series B. The founders invested their own money from previous successful exits to bootstrap the business. Leapwork's follow-up bet on no codes has already paid off: The platform has grown more than tenfold since its launch in 2017. It now has 300+ customers worldwide who use it to accelerate their business processes.
Software testing is Leapwork's main focus. Leapwork pitches the tool to enterprises as a quality assurance and test team.
The company claims that its no-code tech, a term for software that is accessible to non-technical staff and greatly increasing its utility, applicability, and speed of market, can help businesses achieve a 10x increase in time to market, 97% productivity gains, a 90% decrease in application errors, and a 10x quicker time to market. Its main purpose is to help enterprises achieve digital transformations faster using their existing skills.
Some of our customers include PayPal, Mercedes-Benz, and BNP Paribas.
Leapworks' own business has grown to 170 employees working in nine offices across Europe, North America, and Asia.
The startup plans to use the Series B funding to increase its global expansion. It also stated that it will expand its local teams in key markets, and create a series tech hubs to help further product development.
Leapwork notes that it is now a top priority to expand in North America. It recently opened a New York branch where it intends to increase its headcount.
Christian Brink Frederiksen, CEO, tells TechCrunch that we want to be as global as possible. This means we will continue to build local teams and expertise in each of our key markets, particularly Europe and North America. We will, for example, build more expertise and plan on increasing the size of the New York team over the next twelve months.
We have also opened new offices in Europe to allow our teams to interact with customers. We plan to invest heavily both in the product itself and the technology behind it. In the next 12 month, we plan to double the size of our tech hubs at Copenhagen and India.
The Series B's chunky size will accelerate product development. It will be focused on functionality and enhancements that aim to break down the language barrier between computers and humans, according to Brink Frederiksen.
Our main markets are the US and Europe. He also said that half of our customers are US-based companies.
Our solution is non-code and is widely used in many industries including healthcare, life sciences, logistics, transportation and manufacturing.
When Leapworks is asked about its competitors, given the fact that the no-code space has become a swarming hotbed of activity in recent years, the initial response is coy. It is trying to claim that its business is an exceptional snowflake. We believe that we are the only solution that allows everyday users of computers to automate repetitive computer tasks without having to know how to code. Brink Frederiksen's visual language, which is free of code, is what sets us apart.
Leapwork, however, identifies a number of legacy players, such as Smartbear and Ranorex, Eggplant Software, Eggplant Software, Mabl, and Selenium, as having great products. However, they continue to claim that their audience is different than ours.
Leapworks Series B raise is a clear sign of the value that investors see here.
Patrick Devine, director of KKR, commented in a statement: Test automation has been a challenge historically at large, and it is becoming a growing pain point, as the pace for software development accelerates. Leapworks' primary goal since its inception was to solve this problem. It has done this admirably with its powerful, no-code automation platform.
Stephen Shanley, managing Director at KKR, stated that Leapwork's team has done a great job creating a culture of excellence which has enabled them to continually innovate, execute, and push the limits of their automation platform.
Nowi Kallen (principal at Salesforce Ventures) added: Leapwork has identified a significant market opportunity through its no-code automated test automation software. We look forward to Leapwork's continued growth and success with Claus Rosenkrantz Topholt and Christian [Rosenkrantz Topholt].
The proof is in the adoption and use of new ways of manipulating and interfacing information. Leapwork has seen positive signs so far.
