Personio raises $200M in second Series E to drive expansion and further its vision for HR software

Personio, Europe’s leading HR software company for small and mid-sized businesses, recently announced a planned second closing of its pre-emptive Series E round, adding $200 million to the initial financing raised in October 2021. The new funding brings the total capital raised through its Series E to $470 million, valuing the company at $8.5 billion, making it one of the fastest growing and most valuable software startups worldwide.

Existing investor Greenoaks led the round, demonstrating further support of Personio’s ambition to digitise people processes for small and mid-sized businesses across Europe. The investment follows Personio’s exceptional recent performance, including sustained year on year growth, additional expansion opportunities, and recognises the value of Personio’s services to SMEs even in uncertain economic times.

The funds will turbocharge the development of People Workflow Automation, Personio’s vision to automate people processes across an organisation’s multiple departments and tools. Significant progress has been made to further develop an HR system that continues to provide business enhancing efficiencies today while being engineered for the future. So far a billion data updates have been automated across Personio’s customer base already, replacing time consuming manual tasks for customers.

Most recently Personio announced the acquisition of Back, an employee experience solution that automates key people processes. Back’s team brings significant experience in developing workflows that span fragmented systems, along with a specific ticketing and knowledge management service that boosts efficiency for HR teams.

Customers can now use over 100 integrated apps and APIs as well as new workflow automation and monitoring capabilities developed by Personio to reduce manual effort in tasks such as hiring, data analysis and time tracking. Together these improve operations across the employee lifecycle and allow HR teams to focus on more strategic tasks, reducing costs and helping to create efficient businesses.

Personio continues to grow its core people operating system to cover additional aspects of the employee lifecycle. Early in 2022, Personio launched its new Performance & Development solution, which empowers organisations to better develop their people, reward them fairly, and maximise overall performance. In May, the company also announced the opening of new offices in Berlin and Barcelona.