A rush of agent AI solutions has been hitting the enterprise market, and now one of the bigger players in automation has scooped up the space startups in hopes of winning a larger portion of that market. Uipath said it has acquired Peak.ai, a Manchester startup that builds “decision-making” pricing and inventory management AI solutions for retail and manufacturing businesses as part of its quarterly results report last night.
The terms of the transaction have not been disclosed, but a source familiar with the transaction told TechCrunch that Peak.ai was not looking for a buyer or the end of the runway, and the transaction was paid in cash. Robert Anton said in an interview that Oxx was one of Peak.ai’s supporters, but he was “very happy” with the outcome.
Peak last raised money in 2021, when Softbank backed the company for $75 million. Pitchbook notes that Round raised a total of $121 million from investors including Money, MMC and Ourcrowd, giving it a big valuation with about $267 million in money.
However, according to the last company account filed with Company House in the UK, Peak reported revenue of £9 million ($11.6 million), an increase of 17% from the previous year ended December 31, 2023.
“The peak continued to grow in the global market despite facing strong economic headwinds,” the company said in its submission.
These headwinds are also hitting big companies. Uipath on Wednesday said fourth quarter revenues rose 5% from the previous year to $424 million.
UIPATH broke quarterly net profit analyst estimates, but its 2026 revenue forecast reduced from $1.525 billion to $1.53 billion, citing “increasing global macroeconomic uncertainty.” That led to a decline in the company’s shares, down 18% in pre-market trading on Thursday at the time of writing.
The forecast revision follows a tough year for companies that settled 10% of their labor force in July 2024 after lowering full-year expectations for 2025.
Uipath’s market capitalization is approximately $6.5 billion.
Peaks could potentially help new owners to enhance revenue growth. The two companies already had a partnership before the acquisition, but the idea is that the deal will increase the opportunity for UIPath to gain more of its overall revenue, beyond the broader set of solutions for Peak customers.
Uipath has started with robotic process automation. This is a business that reached a $35 billion valuation when it was still private. In hindsight, that growth may have written about his desire for AI that is turning corner. After that, I began to understand how AI fits into the picture.
Peak, by contrast, was in an interesting position, building up AI assistants for companies in the years before Openai went to the market, sparking wider conversations and a lot of hype about how AI will affect the business world.
“The ability to seamlessly integrate decision intelligence with automation provides an unprecedented opportunity to redefine the way businesses operate,” Peak’s three founders, Richard Potter, CEO, David Reich, and Atul Sharma, CTO, said in a message announcing the acquisition.
At the very least, the pitch is the seamless integration and the delighted audience of buyers. I hope that it will endure.
We are still looking for details on the transaction price. Please contact me if you have any information.
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