AirSlate, which provides workflow automation solutions – and includes a focus on contracting needs – has bagged a $51.5m funding round led by G Squared. RPA pioneer, UiPath, also invested via its new Ventures arm and underlined their strategic partnership. However, last year the company received $50m in debt financing and $40m in equity funding, i.e. $90m in total, (see below).
Usually, companies that are on the up-and-up tend to have significantly larger VC rounds each time they go to the market. The level of impact of the complexities of the last couple of years and whether airSlate saw each of these equity investments as a ‘full round’ is unclear, but on face value the total sum is smaller than what was raised the year before, if you include the debt financing. Or if we just look at the 2021 $40m funding in isolation, then this following funding in 2022 has only increased by a relatively small step up to $51.5m.
I.e. is the size of this new round a reflection of changing conditions for SaaS businesses, including those that overlap with the legal tech space? (See – ‘Is Legal Tech Facing a VC Funding Crunch?’) Or perhaps airSlate had good reasons for this that are totally independent of market conditions? Artificial Lawyer has contacted the company to ask for a comment about this.
One possible explanation is that demand to get involved with airSlate was so great that they quickly went straight into another round in 2022 right after the 2021 raise. But, we will see.
While not marketed as a ‘legal tech’ company, the US-based business, which started back in 2008, provides a ‘document automation platform that spans electronic signature, PDF editing, document management, and no-code workflow automation solutions’ via four main branches: signNow, pdfFiller, USLegal, and the core airSlate capability.
Borya Shakhnovich, CEO and co-founder, airSlate, said: ‘We are delighted to join forces with G Squared and tap into their depth of experience working with companies that take on big challenges. Our focus on empowering anyone to automate their business processes, combined with airSlate’s ability to scale efficiently, makes G Squared a great partner to help us expand our automation offerings beyond document workflows.’
While, Vijay Khanna, Chief Corporate Development Officer at UiPath, added: ‘UiPath Ventures invests in companies that impact the world around us and further our purpose of accelerating human achievement. airSlate falls firmly into that category.’
‘Borya’s clear and ambitious vision for the company has helped drive impressive traction in a short period of time. We look forward to working together to harness the power of the UiPath platform and bring it to the millions of users and small businesses who rely on airSlate to keep their businesses running.’
As noted, it’s not clear yet why the funding level was this amount. Artificial Lawyer will add a comment from airSlate once they get back to this site with one.