Romanian chatbot maker DRUID, staffed by former employees of the country’s two most successful tech exits, TotalSoft and UiPath, has raised a $30m Series B at around a $100m valuation, Sifted understands.
US VC TQ Ventures, the backer of companies such as BeReal, Clubhouse and RO Health, led the round, with existing investors Hoxton Ventures, Karma Ventures and Gapminder participating.
More and more Romanian startups are trying to follow UiPath’s footsteps and come up with smart ideas to make the operations of big enterprises easier and faster — companies like FlowX.ai and Kubeark — and international investors seem keen not to miss out on what could be the next big thing.
What does DRUID do?
DRUID's platform helps companies build and design chatbots which can easily be applied to their existing tech stack.
It’s already been used by huge organisations like Liberty Global, Texas Children's Hospital, the NHS, Auchan, Société Générale, BNP Paribas and Axa.
The uses for DRUID’s chatbots are many: at an ecommerce store, customers could enquire about the status of an order or return; at a health facility, they could go through the triage and pre-diagnosis process, book appointments and check test results; with their bank, they could ask for a loan.
The bots can also be used by employees to solve admin and operational tasks.
DRUID was founded in 2018 in Romania by five cofounders, who all previously worked for another Romanian tech company, business software giant TotalSoft. It’s now headquartered in London, with offices in Austin, Bucharest and Melbourne, and employs 150 people worldwide.
It has hired several ex-UiPath employees into strategic roles, including Kedar Dani, UiPath’s ex-global VP, to design and assist with the execution of its go-to-market strategy, Vargha Moayed, UiPath’s ex-chief strategy officer as strategic advisor to the CEO and Mihai Faur, UiPath’s current CIO as an independent board member.
Where will the money go?
With the fresh funding, DRUID wants to focus on widening its global outreach and strengthening its presence in its main market, the US, which accounts for 60% of its current revenue.
Andreea Pleșea, DRUID’s cofounder, says the company also plans to enhance its natural language processing engine and continue its “exploration into the potential of generative AI”.
What’s the market like?
The market is full of chatbots — and ChatGPT only made it easier for companies to integrate conversational solutions into their operations.
But Pleșea says that what sets DRUID apart is its “holistic approach” and the fact that the chatbots can easily work with any other pre-existing tech stacks, like CRMs.
Who has invested?
- TQ Ventures, a US VC
- Smedvig Capital, a UK VC
- GapMinder, a Romanian VC
- Hoxton Ventures, a UK VC
- Karma Ventures, an Estonian VC
