A rush of agentic AI solutions is hitting the enterprise market, and now one of the bigger players in automation has scooped up a startup in the space in hopes of taking a bigger piece of that market. UiPath, as part of a quarterly result report last night that spelled tougher times ahead, also delivered what it hopes might prove a silver lining. It said it had acquired Peak.ai, a startup founded originally in Manchester, England.
Peak builds “decision-making” AI, covering functions like pricing and inventory management for companies in retail and manufacturing. Daniel Dines, the founder and CEO of UiPath, said was buying it as part of a strategy to build out more AI and automation services for specific verticals.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but sources familiar with the it told TechCrunch that Peak.ai was not looking for a buyer, nor was it at the end of its runway, and the deal was in cash. Robert Anton, whose firm Oxx was one of Peak.ai’s backers, said in an interview that he was “very happy” with the outcome.
Peak last raised money back in 2021, when SoftBank backed the company with $75 million. PitchBook notes that round had valued the company at around $267 million post-money, on a total of $121 million raised from investors that included Octopus, MMC and OurCrowd.
However, Peak reported revenue of just under £9 million ($11.6 million), up 17% from the previous year, in the year ended December 31, 2023, according to its last company accounts filed with Companies House in the U.K.
“Peak continued to grow in a global market, despite facing strong economic headwinds,” the company noted in the filing.
Those headwinds are hitting bigger companies, too. UiPath on Wednesday said its revenue in the fourth quarter increased just 5% to $424 million from a year earlier.
While UiPath beat analyst estimates for net profit for the quarter, it cut its revenue forecast for FY 2026 to between $1.525 billion and $1.530 billion, citing “increasing global macroeconomic uncertainty.” That sent the company’s NYSE-listed shares falling. They were down 18% in pre-market trading on Thursday at the time of writing.
The revised forecast follows a tough year for the company, which in July 2024 laid off 10% of its workforce after lowering full-year expectations for fiscal year 2025.
UiPath currently has a market cap of about $6.5 billion.
Peak could potentially help its new owner bolster revenue growth. The two companies already had partnerships prior to the acquisition, and the idea is that the deal will give UiPath more opportunities to cross-sell its wider set of solutions to Peak’s customers, as well as capture more of Peak’s overall revenue.
UiPath got its start in robotic process automation — “software robots” that let businesses run more routine and rote work in automated flows. The company saw unprecedented growth as a startup. “I’ve never seen an enterprise company grow this fast,” one of its investors told us at one point. That growth catapulted UiPath to a valuation of $35 billion when it was still private.
That growth, in hindsight, may well have spelled out the appetite for the AI that was just around the corner. But strictly speaking, UiPath’s RPA was not AI. It was only later that it started figuring out how AI fit into that picture.
In contrast, Peak’s been in an interesting position, catching on to the opportunity to build AI assistants for businesses years before OpenAI hit the market and sparked a wider conversation, and a lot of hype, around how AI would impact the world of business.
But being early also meant that AI was a harder sell for the startup at times. In its account filing with Companies House, Peak noted that would-be customers saw AI as a “gamble” but that perception had started to shift over 2023, and it was picking up new interest specifically in the U.S. manufacturing sector. With Romania-founded UiPath now effectively a U.S. company, this will potentially give it a clearer channel into that market.
“The ability to seamlessly integrate decision intelligence with automation presents an unprecedented opportunity to redefine how businesses operate,” Peak’s three founders, Richard Potter (CEO), David Leitch (CIO) and Atul Sharma (CTO), said in a message today announcing the acquisition.
Seamless integration and a willing audience of buyers is the pitch, at least. Whether it bears out is the hope.
“With the acquisition of Peak, we are accelerating our mission to strengthen our vertical AI solutions strategy,” said Dines in a statement. “When combined with the UiPath platform, Peak’s exceptional purpose-built AI applications will enhance our ability to provide solutions that optimize industry-specific use cases and deliver incredible value to customers.”
We are still looking for more details on the deal price. Contact me if you have information.
