Some hot tech startups attract a lot of money. A few attract partnerships from major industry players eager to get a piece of the action before the big money moves in.

And then there is that seldom-seen third option, where a robotic process automation startup attracts significant investment, inks key strategic agreements with partners and system integrators and attracts more than 2,800 customers worldwide while accumulating major market share.

This is the rarefied air in which Automation Anywhere Inc. finds itself today. The RPA and artificial intelligence company announced last week that it expects to deploy nearly 3 million bots by 2020 and claimed 85% of the world’s top tech firms, 85% of leading financial institutions and 90% of major healthcare providers as customers.

All of this follows a Series A investment round of $550 million, funded separately last July and November, one of the 10 largest venture investments made during a very active 2018.

What is powering Automation Anywhere’s rise is a fervently held belief that it has tapped into the rich vein of success that has accompanied only a few major technology adoptions in the past, such as the introduction of the personal computer and the internet.

“It’s available to anyone and any profile of people, it’s available anywhere on any device, and it’s available for any sized company,” said Mihir Shukla (pictured), co-founder and chief executive officer of Automation Anywhere. “When you look at any technology that has made millions of lives better, it had these three characteristics in common. Our mission is to make the power of RPA and AI reach millions of people and make their lives better.”

Shukla spoke with Jeff Frick, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Automation Anywhere Imagine event in New York City. They discussed Automation Anywhere’s recent news and product offerings, the important role of developers, how AI is transforming enterprise workflows, plans for capital investment and continued growth of the partnership portfolio (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

This week, theCUBE features Mihir Shukla as its Guest of the Week.

Automation for free

One way that Automation Anywhere makes people’s lives better is to offer its technology for free. Last month, the company released a no-cost Community Edition of its software for developers, small businesses and students. The offering provides full access to Automation Anywhere’s suite of products, which includes RPA, Bot Insight, IQ Bot and the Bot Store.

“We believe that students are our future, and they will take this technology forward,” Shukla said. “It seemed like the right place to invest and enable them with the next set of technologies.”

Aside from offering its technology to students and small businesses, the company’s move to entice developers represents a carefully crafted approach to address the realities of a fast-moving industry. One analyst defined the global RPA market as a $100 billion opportunity, and Gartner Inc. has predicted that by the end of 2022, 85% of large enterprises will have adopted the technology in some form.

That’s growth worth pursuing, and Shukla’s company is anticipating that developers will be focused not only on processes currently ripe for automation, but those that have not even been realized yet. Over the next three to five years, at least a third of the products and services that  will require automation are not part of our lives today, according to Shukla.

“Developers are an amazing asset; they will find these new ways that none of us know about,” he stated. “We thought they would love the power of this combined platform that’s not available anywhere else. They will create this new future in front of our eyes.”

Wide range of use cases

How are companies currently using RPA technology? A look at the case histories provided on Automated Anywhere’s website show a wide range of purposes, ranging from automating wagering data flows between systems in an example provided by the U.K.-based Satellite Information Services to accurately transferring 30 years of patient data at the Family Medical Center in Kentucky.

Earlier this month, Infogain Corp., a partner with Automation Anywhere, released details of a deployment solution designed to automate nearly 100% of property listings for a client. Automation Anywhere has made significant investment in AI, according to Shukla, which has helped it offer new solutions for addressing manual tasks in the enterprise.

The company recently announced advances for its IQ Bot AI solution that can now read and process complex documents and emails in 190 languages, along with images.

“I’ve had the very extraordinary privilege of seeing this AI transformation through the eyes of thousands of people who use our platform every day,” said Shukla, who described how none of his customers ever said they would go back to using a manual process. “Why would you? Why would you do a robotic job?”

Investor and partner interest

This reasoning has propelled Shukla’s company to draw investment from firms such as The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and the SoftBank Vision Fund. The most recent funding of $300 million was based on a valuation set at $2.6 billion.

The company has approximately 35 offices worldwide and plans to use the investment for increasing its international footprint, according to Shukla, in addition to other purposes.

“We are significantly investing in global expansion,” Shukla said. “Our research and development investment continues to grow, especially in AI and making RPA accessible to millions. We will carefully look at acquiring new technologies to make our digital labor platform more complete.”

In addition to channeling its newly acquired investment capital, Automation Anywhere also plans to expand its partnership portfolio. The company has existing partnerships with IBM Corp. and Microsoft Corp., plus agreements with major cloud providers Amazon Web Services Inc. and Google LLC.

More recently, Automation Anywhere announced  a new collaboration with Oracle Corp., unveiling plans to accelerate adoption of AI-driven bots inside the Oracle Integration Cloud. And in February, the company revealed the Workday Software Partner Program.

“It has an enormous potential,” Shukla said about the Workday collaboration. “When you combine best-in-class human resources and cloud finance with a best-in-class intelligent digital workforce, the possibility of value creation is enormous.”

The potential rise of an intelligent digital workforce lies at the heart of the Automation Anywhere mission. Forrester Research Inc. has predicted that by the end of this year, one out of 10 startups will begin with more digital workers than humans. Shukla and his company are banking that this trend will only continue to grow.

“It is things that we don’t know yet,” Shukla explained. “That happens all the time. The way we use phones, et cetera … nobody could have predicted this. It will happen in our space as well.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Automation Anywhere Imagine. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Imagine event. Neither Automation Anywhere, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE