Celonis raises $50 mln B round from Accel, 83North

Accel and 83North doubled down on Celonis, injecting another $50 million into the process mining startup.

Other investors of the B round include veteran software executive Alex Ott and Carsten Thoma, co-founder of Hybris.

Celonis previously raised $27.5 million in 2016 with the same investors. The current B round values Celonis at $1 billion.

“It feels good,” said Alexander Rinke, a Celonis co-founder and co-CEO, when asked about the company’s unicorn status.

He said it was much more important to emphasize what Celonis does for its customers, and what it builds, “than where we currently stand in valuations.”

Celonis — the name was inspired by the Greek god “Celos” meaning aspiration and striving — has been profitable every year since its inception in 2011, Rinke said.

The company wanted to keep things simple with the B round and reached out to its current investors in April, he said. There was much interest in the fundraise, but Celonis opted to stay with its current investors, who all recommitted, he said.

“We saw it as a great vote of confidence,” Rinke said. “Investors are usually happy to let others invest. Our existing investors wanted to underwrite the full amount.”

The three co-founders of Celonis are Rinke, Bastian Nominacher and Martin Klenk. They continue to own a large majority of the company after the two rounds, Rinke said.

Celonis is not a big-data company, Rinke said, but rather a data miner that helps transform businesses by uncovering inefficiencies.

(Gartner values the automated business process discovery industry at $15 billion, according to Forbes.)

Rinke pointed to Vodafone, a client, where Celonis helped the telecom speed up its invoice automation processing to 35 percent from 17 percent, Rinke said.

“This saved them millions of dollars internally,” he said. Other customers include Uber, Merck and Lockheed Martin.

With headquarters in New York and Munich, Celonis employs more than 350 people across the U.S., Europe, Latin America and Asia.

The company plans to use the B round for growth; it’s hiring about 15 people globally each month.

In the short term, Celonis plans to open Midwest and West Coast offices and also expects to boost R&D investments in product development.

One thing Rinke is not considering: an IPO or a sale for Celonis. “What we really want to do is build a business, a large independent software company,” he said.

Action Item: Contact Rinke at +1 212-847-0692.