AirSlate raises $40 million to automate repetitive business processes

Workflow automation startup AirSlate today announced it has raised $40 million from backers that include Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, General Catalyst, and HighSage Ventures. The company says the funds, which come as it closes an additional investment round, will enable product functionality expansion and international growth, as well as hiring within the marketing and sales organizations.

When McKinsey surveyed 1,500 executives across industries and regions in 2018, 66% said addressing skills gaps related to automation and digitization was a “top 10” priority. According to market research firm Fact.MR, small and medium-sized enterprises are expected to adopt business workflow automation at scale, creating a market opportunity of more than $1.6 billion between 2017 and 2026.

AirSlate launched its first product — a PDF editor — in 2008. In 2015, the company expanded into software integrations for customer relationship management software and apps, followed by an e-signature management offering in 2017.

Above: AirSlate’s dashboard.

Image Credit: AirSlate

Now AirSlate’s mulit-cloud platform lets customers automate whole parts of backend processes using single, no-code solutions. Powered by document process automation and robotic process automation technologies, AirSlate can help negotiate contracts, facilitate payments and surveys, and get documents e-signed by generating prefilled documents, sending reminders and notifications, extracting data and updating records, and implementing conditional workflow routing.

AirSlate leverages rules-based bots that integrate with existing services to automate approvals, data analytics, alerts, permission assignment, and data transfer. Customers can’t create custom bots, but they’re able to request bots for specific tasks from the AirSlate team, with a turnaround time of about a week, on average.

For companies in need of a fully managed offering, there’s AirSlate Business Cloud, which spans PDF editing, e-signature workflows, and robotic and document process automation. Business Cloud subscribers can author new (or edit existing) PDF documents, create and manage workflows, assign roles, and send out documents for e-signing. They also gain access to an online library of over 85,000 state-specific legal forms, including non-disclosure agreements, real estate forms, wills, and customer contracts.

Onboarding in AirSlate prompts companies to create workforces for teams. Employees join the workspace via email and distribute workflows among themselves. Within the workspace, they can navigate team documents and agreement flows, collaborating as needed.

AirSlate counts over 20 million users across customers like the Australian government, Xerox, CBS Sports, GoFundMe, and Amgen. (That’s up from 6 million users as of 2015.) This year, the company expects annual recurring revenue to surpass $100 million.

“AirSlate’s no-code ethos requires no technical expertise to use and gives everyone the opportunity to design and implement beautiful, personalized, secure, and digitally executable customer and employee experiences,” CEO Borya Shakhnovich, who founded online science research community Orwick prior to cofounding AirSlate, said in a statement. “Now more than ever, we see huge demand from businesses of all sizes — from very small to enterprise — that need the agility and efficiency of the no-code AirSlate platform to drive their business.”

The funding announced today is Boston-based AirSlate’s second public round. It brings the fourteen-year-old company’s total raised to $80 million, following a $40 million series A in July 2017 from “leading growth investors.” AirSlate currently has around 825 employees.