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A rush of agentic AI solutions is hitting the enterprise market, and now one of the bigger players in automation has scooped up a startup in the space in hopes of taking a bigger piece of that business. UiPath<\/a>, as part of its quarterly earnings last night, announced<\/a> that it acquired Peak.ai<\/a>, a startup out of Manchester that builds \u201cdecision-making\u201d AI solutions for functions like pricing and inventory management for companies in retail and manufacturing.<\/p>\n Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but sources say that Peak.ai was not looking for a buyer, nor was it at the end of its runway, and the deal was in cash. Robert Anton, whose firm Oxx was one of Peak.ai\u2019s backers, said in an interview that he was \u201cvery happy\u201d with the outcome. \u00a0<\/p>\n Peak last raised money back in 2021, when SoftBank backed the company with $75 million<\/a>. PitchBook noted that this last round had valued the company at around $267 million post-money on a total of $121 million raised from investors that also included Octopus, MMC and OurCrowd.<\/p>\n But in the last company accounts filed with Companies House in the U.K., for the year ending December 31, 2023, Peak said it made just under \u00a39 million ($11.6 million) in revenues. That was up 17% on the year before.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPeak continued to grow in a global market, despite facing strong economic headwinds,\u201d the company noted in the filing.<\/p>\n Those headwinds are hitting bigger companies, too. UiPath\u2019s overall results yesterday showed the company\u2019s revenues for the fourth quarter<\/a> were up just 5% on a year ago to $424 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n On top of that, while it beat<\/a> analyst estimates for the quarter, it cited \u201cincreasing global macro economic uncertainty\u201d to revise down its 2026 fiscal outlook to between $1.525 billion and $1.530 billion in revenues \u2014 sending the company\u2019s shares falling, currently 18% down in pre-market trading at the time of writing.\u00a0<\/p>\n Those revisions were coming on the heels of a tough year for the company, which in July 2024 laid off 10% of its workforce after lowering full-year expectations for fiscal year 2025.<\/p>\n UiPath, which is traded on the NYSE, has a market cap of about $6.5 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n Revenue growth is where Peak could potentially help its new owner. The two companies had already been partnering together prior to the acquisition, and the idea is that this will give UiPath more opportunities to cross-sell its wider set of solutions to Peak\u2019s customers \u2014 as well as capture more of Peak\u2019s overall revenue at its bottom line.\u00a0<\/p>\n UiPath got its start in robotic process automation \u2014 a business that took off like a rocket and catapulted it to a valuation of $35 billion when it was still a privately-held startup. (That growth in hindsight may well have spelled out the appetite for the AI that was just around the corner.) It moved only later into figuring out how AI fit into that picture<\/a>. In contrast, Peak\u2019s been in an interesting position, building AI assistants for businesses in the years before OpenAI hit the market and sparked a wider conversation, and a lot of hype, around how AI would impact the world of business.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ability to seamlessly integrate decision intelligence with automation presents an unprecedented opportunity to redefine how businesses operate,\u201d Peak\u2019s three founders Richard Potter (CEO), David Leitch (CIO) and Atul Sharma (CTO) note in a message announcing the acquisition.\u00a0<\/p>\n Seamless integration, and a willing audience of buyers for the product, is the pitch, at least. Whether it bears out will be the hope.<\/p>\n We are still looking for more details on the deal price. (Contact me<\/a> if you have information.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n