Cyclone, a leading global RPA company and hyperautomation industry leader, recently closed a '50 million Series C financing round, making it the largest Chinese RPA vendor with a single round of financing.
This round was raised by CMC Capital, Goldman Sachs Asset Management , V Fund, ZWC Partners, Lavender Hill CapitalPartners (LHCP), with added capital from old shareholders DCM, Matrix Partners, and Sourcecode Capital.
After this round of financing, Cyclone will continue to deepen its hyper-automation product capabilities and technical strength, accelerate its coverage of small and medium-sized customers, and strengthen global channel building and partner ecological cooperation.
Li Xing, Partner of V Fund, said that the global digitalization of industry is on the rise. In China, two waves of informationization and digitalization are overlapping, and the penetration rate of enterprise service software is rapidly increasing, resulting in a promising market. In this process, RPA is extremely versatile and has a wide range of applications. It is a fundamental technology and tool to liberate manpower, break data silos, connect business, and realize the digitalization of industry. RPA combined with AI and other technologies even promises to super automate enterprise business. Cyclone is the head of RPA in China and has a strong international reputation. The Cyclone team is young and experienced and visionary. We are extremely impressed with the professionalism of the team. We are confident that Cyclone will play a key role in the digital wave in China and globally.
Chen Xian, Partner and Chief Investment Officer of CMC Capital, said that in the context of increasing labor costs and the urgent need to improve management efficiency, software automation technology represented by RPA can greatly improve the operational efficiency of enterprises and free employees from repetitive labor. At the same time, RPA is becoming a key component of digital transformation for global and Chinese enterprises, breaking down the barriers between internal and external software and system architecture, enabling business and data connectivity, and empowering customers to expand new scenarios and capabilities. After continuous polishing and iteration, Cyclone's complete end-to-end RPA solution has been highly evaluated by customers. Cyclone has an experienced management team, a superior platform vision and solid business implementation capabilities, and we are excited to help it continue to lead the industry and drive the construction of Digital China.
Feng Xinyi, Managing Director of Goldman Sachs Asset Management's Private and Growth Equity Group, said RPA is one of the fastest growing and most highly regarded segments of enterprise services software, and China is one of the largest and fastest growing markets in the world. In the context of China's digital transformation, RPA is helping Chinese companies reduce costs, reduce human error and increase productivity by streamlining workflows. The continued demand from companies looking to automate repetitive processes to focus on core business activities will drive the industry to new heights. We will leverage our global network, capital and expertise to support Cyclone in capturing this tremendous growth opportunity.
Zeng Zhenyu, Managing Partner of DCM, which continued to raise this round of funding, said that RPA is ushering in a period of rapid development in the industry. The boundaries between digital and physical robots are becoming blurred, and hyper automation is providing a stronger boost to comprehensive digitalization and intelligence in all industries. DCM, as an early investor of Cyclone, is firmly optimistic about the prospect of China RPA market and Cyclone team. We hope Cyclone will lead the development of RPA industry in China with its unique innovative power.
Matrix Partners, who also added to this round, said that RPA and hyper-automation is the next generation of enterprise software, which will become a flexible operating system and intelligent hub for assembling intelligent applications within enterprises. Cyclone has the best integrated team in RPA and super automation field. With forward-looking and comprehensive technology and product strength, extensive and in-depth industry scenario application and benchmark customer practice, Cyclone has achieved high growth beyond expectation in the past, and the recent release of the industry's first enterprise-level RPA platform product is also highly anticipated.
Zhang Xingchen of Sourcecode Capital, also a long-time shareholder, said，Cyclone team is very innovative and iterative. From the very beginning when we invested we were impressed by the team's combativeness and acumen in finding directions, to the company gradually growing into a first-rate team with full combativeness, it only took a very short time. Now the company is well ahead of other players in China on the path to hyper Automation. We expect Cyclone to become a world-class super automation company!
Cyclone
Since 2019, Cyclone has seen explosive growth in the global RPA development wave with an average annual growth rate of over 400%. Favored by first-tier capital, it is the only Chinese vendor to enter both the Gartner Magic Quadrant and be selected for the Forrester Wave, attracting expert talent from top universities and industries around the world, and providing end-to-end software automation platforms and digital transformation solutions for the entire industry.
Gao Yuguang, founder and CEO of Cyclone, said, as the first company in China to upgrade RPA to hyper-automation, Cyclone continues to promote the development of traditional RPA to hyper-automation products and solutions covering the whole life cycle of enterprise digital transformation. After this round of financing, Cyclone will continue to strengthen its product capabilities and technical strength of hyper-automation, accelerate the coverage of small and medium-sized customers, and deepen cooperation with global ecological partners, aiming at the universal super-automation and empowering the digital transformation of the whole society. Cyclone attaches great importance to its independent innovation capability, and the company invests more than 100 million yuan in product development every year. Cyclone has a strong technical team from UiPath, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Tencent and other leading technology companies. In addition, Cyclone also attracts a large number of highly sophisticated talents from McKinsey, Accenture and other well-known business consulting organizations at home and abroad, who have an average of 15 years + experience in enterprise digital transformation and deeply understand the pain points of customers on the road to digital transformation.
Currently, Cyclone products and solutions have served nearly 1,000 customers at home and abroad, covering a wide range of industries including finance, energy, government, public safety, manufacturing, retail, and e-commerce. In October, Cyclone released the industry's first enterprise-class RPA product and eco-partnership strategy to help enterprises achieve end-to-end full-link, full lifecycle business automation, thus realizing digital transformation in a lightweight, agile and assemblable way. In addition, Cyclone has launched a cloud-native platform that allows both individual and enterprise users to easily get started and configure flexibly to enjoy the efficiency gains brought by RPA anytime and anywhere.
Cyclone has a rich ecosystem of partners, including business partners and technology partners. In addition to providing productization and implementation consulting support, Cyclone also hopes to work with partners to create products and solutions focused on specific industries or specific scenarios. In the future, Cyclone will strengthen ecological construction, expand cooperation channels, and provide partners with empowerment programs including technical support, product training, and business scenario implementation.
In March of this year, Cyclone established its Singapore branch and took this as the center of its efforts to expand into the Asia Pacific market outside of China. With strong market recognition and localization advantages, Cyclone has firmly occupied the position of top RPA vendor in Asia Pacific. As the new generation of digital technology continues to iterate, the digital transformation of enterprises has reached a critical moment. Cyclone is willing to work with all parties in the industry to accelerate the process of digital transformation, believing that the era of automation everywhere, digital within reach is coming.