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 market. UiPath, as part of its quarterly results report last night, said it had acquired Peak.ai, a startup out of Manchester that builds “decision-making” pricing and inventory management AI solutions for companies in retail and manufacturing.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but sources familiar with the deal told TechCrunch that Peak.ai was not looking for a buyer, nor was it at the end of its runway, and the deal was paid for in cash. Robert Anton, whose firm Oxx was one of Peak.ai’s backers, said in an interview that he was “very happy” with the outcome.
Peak last raised money back in 2021, when SoftBank backed the company with $75 million. PitchBook notes that round had valued the company at around $267 million post-money, on a total of $121 million raised from investors who include Octopus, MMC and OurCrowd.
However, Peak reported revenue of just under £9 million ($11.6 million), up 17% from the previous year, in the year ended December 31, 2023, according to its last company accounts filed with Companies House in the U.K.
“Peak continued to grow in a global market, despite facing strong economic headwinds,” the company noted in the filing.
Those headwinds are hitting bigger companies, too. UiPath on Wednesday said its revenue in the fourth quarter increased just 5% to $424 million from a year earlier.
While UiPath beat analyst estimates for net profit for the quarter, it cut its revenue forecast for FY 2026 to between $1.525 billion and $1.530 billion, citing “increasing global macroeconomic uncertainty.” That sent the company’s shares falling, and they were down 18% in pre-market trading on Thursday at the time of writing.
The forecast revision follows 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.
UiPath has a market cap of about $6.5 billion.
Peak could potentially help its new owner bolster revenue growth. The two companies already had partnerships prior to the acquisition, and the idea is that the deal will give UiPath more opportunities to cross-sell its wider set of solutions to Peak’s customers, as well as capture more of its overall revenue.
UiPath got its start in robotic process automation, a business that catapulted it to a valuation of $35 billion when it was still private. That growth, in hindsight, may well have spelled out the appetite for the AI that was just around the corner. It only later started figuring out how AI fit into that picture.
In contrast, Peak’s been in an interesting position, building AI assistants for businesses in the years before OpenAI hit the market and sparked the wider conversation, and a lot of hype, around how AI would impact the world of business.
“The ability to seamlessly integrate decision intelligence with automation presents an unprecedented opportunity to redefine how businesses operate,” Peak’s three founders, Richard Potter (CEO), David Leitch (CIO) and Atul Sharma (CTO), said in a message announcing the acquisition.
Seamless integration and a willing audience of buyers is the pitch, at least. Whether it bears out is the hope.
We are still looking for more details on the deal price. Contact me if you have information.