Well-funded robotic process automation startup Automation Anywhere Inc. has become the latest victim of COVID-19, laying off hundreds of its workers as demand for its traditional products has fallen sharply.

The company said it was adapting to stronger demand for cloud services caused by the coronavirus-induced shift to remote work. The job cuts could affect up to 10% of Automation Anywhere’s workforce, according to Axios, which first reported the news.

Automation Anywhere sells software which helps to automate repetitive and common computer tasks. Its platform uses machine learning to handle repetitive tasks that are normally performed by human workers. The software observes how employees carry out a given action, such as filling a form in a back-office accounting system, and learns to replicate the workflow automatically. The company delivers both the core feature set, and additional capabilities such as analytics that make its technology easier to use.

The company sells cloud-based products, but most of its customers reportedly have its software installed on their own servers, in their own offices. But many of those customers are now looking to shift to purely cloud-based products due to the sudden pivot to remote work.

The restructuring is part of the company’s response to the reduced demand for its traditional products, Dayna Fried, Automation Anywhere’s senior communications director, told Business Insider in an interview.

“We’re allocating resources to new skill sets in key growth markets like cloud and hybrid cloud, areas our customers are asking for right now,” she said. “Many of them are leaning toward our cloud and hybrid cloud options to manage the variability in their business as well as to respond to future crises faster or even prevent them from occurring at all.”

But the layoffs are a surprise given that Automation Anywhere’s previous comments suggested that the company was benefiting from the coronavirus pandemic. In a recent interview with Business Insider, Chief Executive Officer Mihir Shukla said that interest in its products had increased “significantly” since the start of the outbreak.

Still, many companies, during an economic crisis, will attempt to scale back or even eliminate certain infrastructure investments, especially those that are focused on future opportunities, analyst Charles King of Pund-IT Inc. told SiliconANGLE.

“Automation Anywhere has a terrific rep in one of business IT hottest areas, RPA,” King said. “But that technology still has a way to go before it achieves wide acceptance and sizable adoption. The company isn’t the first and won’t be the last to tighten its belt and reduce headcount. Given the scope of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic uncertainty, it’s probably the wisest course for Automation Anywhere to follow.”

Automation Anywhere had previously raised $840 million in funding from backers including Salesforce Ventures, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and SoftBank Group Corp. The company is valued at about $7 billion.

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller told SiliconANGLE that the layoffs indicate that SoftBank, which has backed a whole host of technology startups in recent years, appears to have lost faith in the company.

“The slowdown of business is also slowing down license sales and halting implementations,” Mueller said. “This can quickly hurt vendors that are losing money, not having much capital at their disposal and whose business is down.”

Shukla spoke to theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming video studio, at the company’s Imagine conference in New York last year:

Photo: Automation Anywhere/Facebook