The new investment brought Laiye's total funds raised for its Series C round to USD 160 million
Laiye (Chinese: 来也科技), a Chinese intelligent automation company, has announced its completion of a Series C++ round of financing valued at USD 70 million.
The investment was led by HOPU Magnolia, followed by VMS Group and Youshan Capital. Existing investors such as Lightspeed China Partners also participated in this round.
The proceeds will be used to conduct deep research on an integrated automation platform, accelerate expansion in the international market and construct a global developer community to help the firm become a leader in intelligent automation.
“We have tracked Laiye's progress since its seed round. Our confidence comes from its great team and professional experience in RPA and AI. They built the largest and the unique open platform and developer community with combination of RPA and AI,” James Mi, founding partner of Lightspeed China, told EqualOcean. “Laiye has the potential to become a reformer of the RPA space in China.”
“At the beginning, the growth of revenue was slower than expected because of the epidemic. After they reinforced their sales team and expanded business abroad, their growth has met our expectations ,” said Mi.
According to the veteran investor, who claims a spot among China’s best-known venture capitalists, Laiye has undergone “massive changes” during the recent two years, including budding globalized operation, a gradually well-developed product matrix and an expanding network of partners and registered users.
For example, the firm now boasts 600 partners and 600,000 developers, tripling the figures from a mere two years ago, when it closed its Series C round of financing.
Over the past three years, Laiye's revenue has maintained high-speed growth of 120%. It has served over 40% of the Fortune 500 companies, 200 government agencies and thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises, covering electricity, banking, communication and other industries.
At the same time, Laiye has set up an overseas team of more than 100 staff spanning 15 countries in Europe, the Americas and Southeast Asia. Last week, it crossed a new milestone in its global expansion after it acquired the French Chatbot startup Mindsay and established a new R&D hub in Paris.
Although the intelligent automation industry is still in its infancy, observers have pointed out that the biggest market opportunity lies in the amalgamation of automation and AI.
Mi explained that companies capable of blending RPA, chatbot AI, smart document processing, and process mining to build a complete end-to-end solution will stand to profit.
Such integrated functions will endear them to big clients who are in need of an all-in-one intelligent automation platform that combines automation, smart technologies and products, rather than applications or tools meant for certain scenarios.
That's the reason, in his view, that Laiye possesses a competitive edge relative to overseas rivals. "Compared to similar RPA companies abroad, Laiye's product lineup is richer and iterates at a faster rate," said Mi. "Its integrated intelligent automation platform and anticipation of the future put it at the forefront of the industry and keep it in sync with future trends and needs of big clients."