Self-styled “synthetic labor” startup KnowledgeLake Inc. has become the latest “agentic” artificial intelligence platform to attract millions in funding.

It has raised $65 million in a majority growth investment round led by Edison Partners, with participation from some of its existing shareholders. Today’s round came as it announced a new chief executive: long-serving executive Kevin Herr.

The startup is the creator of an intelligent document automation platform that leverages artificial intelligence and robotic process automation to help organizations automate much of their work with documents. It provides tools for capturing, classifying, managing and securing content in cloud environments such as Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and SharePoint.

KnowledgeLake’s capabilities span machine learning, which understands documents, classifies them and then extracts the data from within them. In addition, it provides access to a growing synthetic labor workforce that’s powered by robotic process automation and AI agents to take over many of the most mundane and repetitive document-related business tasks, looking to automate as much of this work as possible.

The startup says today’s funding injection comes at a time when the market for business automation tools is evolving and consolidating, as organizations look to move away from the need to stitch together multiple disconnected systems. Instead, businesses increasingly want unified platforms that integrate document processing, workflow automation and AI-powered insights in one, easy-to-deploy package.

That plays to KnowledgeLake’s strengths, the company said, and explains why it has seized an “expanding position” in the $70 billion document processing and workflow automation market, where it claims to have made real inroads with “underserved, midsized government agencies and businesses.

According to KnowledgeLake, it now counts more than 220 customers across the government, healthcare, manufacturing, financial services and education sectors, enabling them to process documents up to 70% faster and with 98% greater accuracy than they could do using traditional methods.

It added that its software-as-a-service-based revenue has grown more than 50% in the last year, off an undisclosed base. That’s thanks to the addition of new customers such as the State of Tennessee, the State of Kentucky, Washington University, U.S. Imaging Network LLC and New Belgium Brewing Co.

Herr knows the company inside out, having served as its chief operating officer and chief financial officer for several years prior to his promotion. He replaces co-founder and former CEO Ron Cameron, who will remain in an advisory role. With Herr at the helm, KnowledgeLake intends to invest in its agentic AI capabilities and create more sophisticated automation tools.

Edison Partners Principal Ben Laufer said he was attracted to KnowledgeLake by the rave reviews of its customers, which have funded much of the company’s growth until now. “Customers consistently praise its AI-enabled, low-code platform and its support,” he added. “The fast time-to-value, the high return on investment, its multi-year contracts and outstanding retention metrics are all compelling.”

Image: KnowledgeLake