AUTOMATION ANYWHERE

Mihir Shukla, Neeti Mehta Shukla, Ankur Kothari and Rushabh Parmani founded the company in San Jose in 2003, originally as Tethys Solutions, building automation tools. The breakthrough came when they realized that every enterprise had thousands of employees doing repetitive computer tasks, copying data from one spreadsheet to another, entering invoices, processing claims, that could be automated without changing existing systems.

RPA bots sit on top of existing software and mimic human actions, clicking buttons, typing data, reading screens. Mihir Shukla has been CEO throughout.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) platform that automates repetitive business tasks using software bots. These bots can log into applications, copy data between systems, fill out forms, process invoices, and handle any repetitive computer-based task that a human would otherwise do.

Revenue comes from enterprise software subscriptions based on the number of bots deployed. The pitch: every employee gets a digital assistant that handles the boring stuff.

Automation 360, the cloud-native RPA platform, now sold as the Automation Success Platform. AARI for human-bot collaboration.

Document Automation, the successor to IQ Bot, which reads invoices and forms with AI. Process Discovery, which spots tasks worth automating.

And AI agent tools layered on top of the bots.

AI integration. Automation Anywhere's answer to the AI threat is to embrace it: combining RPA bots with AI/LLM capabilities to create "intelligent automation." Bots that can understand documents, make decisions, and handle exceptions — not just follow scripts.

The platform has added process discovery (AI identifies what to automate), document understanding (AI reads unstructured documents), and generative AI assistants. Enterprise customers want both: RPA for structured tasks, AI for unstructured ones.

UiPath. The Romanian-founded competitor grew faster, went public first in 2021, and captured more market share.

Blue Prism, the third big player, was bought by SS&C. Then generative AI raised an existential question for the whole category.

If AI agents can understand plain-English instructions, do you still need pre-programmed bots that mimic mouse clicks? Automation Anywhere's 2019 valuation of $6.8 billion has not been tested since, and reported secondary-market prices in early 2026 were far lower.

In January 2026 The Information reported it was in talks to merge with the listed C3.ai, a route to going public without an IPO. No deal had been announced.

General Atlantic and Goldman Sachs led a $250 million round in 2018. Four months later SoftBank's Vision Fund put in $300 million, taking the Series A to $550 million at a $2.6 billion valuation.

In 2019 Salesforce Ventures led a $290 million Series B at $6.8 billion, with SoftBank and Goldman Sachs joining. That remains its last priced round.