UiPath Acquires Peak.ai to Boost Agentic AI Capabilities in Enterprise Automation

UiPath is looking for a path to growth in agentic AI with its Peak.ai acquisition | TechCrunch

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, as part of its quarterly earnings last night, announced that it acquired Peak.ai, a startup out of Manchester that builds "decision-making" AI solutions for functions like pricing and inventory management for companies in retail and manufacturing. 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'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 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. 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 £9 million ($11.6 million) in revenues. That was up 17% on the year before. "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's overall results yesterday showed the company's revenues for the fourth quarter were up just 5% on a year ago to $424 million. On top of that, while it beat analyst estimates for the quarter, it cited "increasing global macro economic uncertainty" to revise down its 2026 fiscal outlook to between $1.525 billion and $1.530 billion in revenues -- sending the company's shares falling, currently 18% down in pre-market trading at the time of writing. 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. UiPath, which is traded on the NYSE, has a market cap of about $6.5 billion. 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's customers -- as well as capture more of Peak's overall revenue at its bottom line. UiPath got its start in robotic process automation -- 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. In contrast, Peak's 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. "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) note in a message announcing the acquisition. Seamless integration, and a willing audience of buyers for the product, is the pitch, at least. Whether it bears out will be the hope.

UiPath Buys Peak to Bolster Agentic Automation Platform | PYMNTS.com

Enterprise automation and artificial intelligence (AI) software company UiPath has acquired AI platform Peak. "With the acquisition of Peak, we are accelerating our mission to strengthen our vertical AI solutions strategy," Daniel Dines, UiPath's founder and chief executive, said in a news release Thursday (March 13). "When combined with the UiPath platform, Peak's exceptional purpose-built AI applications will enhance our ability to provide solutions that optimize industry-specific use cases and deliver incredible value to customers." According to the release, Peak's AI platform optimizes product inventory and pricing for businesses, allowing customers to develop AI workflows, process data, and provide predictions to optimize critical business processes via APIs or integrated web applications. In addition, the platform offers a "new breed" of AI-based decisioning applications that let businesses make decisions on issues like inventory and optimizing product pricing. As part of UiPath, the release added, Peak's solutions can reach new industries, while Peak's focus on accelerating AI adoption in sectors like retail and manufacturing will allow UiPath to accelerate market growth and "deliver vertical-oriented, next-generation AI-driven agentic applications with intelligence powered by LLMs." PYMNTS wrote earlier this year about the use of agentic AI in the retail world, with companies like Amazon, Google Cloud and Salesforce deploying AI tools to help retailers offer better customer experiences, bolster product search, improve inventory management and provide enhanced product recommendations, along with other automated tasks. Keith Kirkpatrick, research director of enterprise applications at The Futurum Group, told PYMNTS that he projects AI agents will ultimately affect certain job functions in retail, though most of these tasks would be digital and not physical duties. "As such, many of these functions are still marketing- or commerce-based, and retailers will be looking to companies in adjacent industries to see how well AI agents from Salesforce, Microsoft, and others are delivering value to their customers," said Kirkpatrick. "The biggest question is whether retailers are willing to invest in technology that is relatively new, and, in many ways, has yet to demonstrate ROI," he added. "Margins are thin, and I think there will need to be a fairly significant ROI examples that are directly relevant to retailers, in order to drive early adoption. I think pricing will be important, and AI agent pricing will need to be tied to specific metrics or outcomes."

UiPath Acquires Peak to Launch Vertically Specialized Agents within its Agentic Automation Platform

UiPath (NYSE: PATH), a leading enterprise automation and AI software company, announced the acquisition of Peak, an AI-native company based in Manchester, United Kingdom. The Peak AI platform optimizes product inventory and pricing for businesses of all sizes and across a wide range of industries, providing customers with tangible outcomes quickly and without the need for large, in-house tech teams. "With the acquisition of Peak, we are accelerating our mission to strengthen our vertical AI solutions strategy," said Daniel Dines, Founder and CEO of UiPath. "When combined with the UiPath platform, Peak's exceptional purpose-built AI applications will enhance our ability to provide solutions that optimize industry-specific use cases and deliver incredible value to customers." Peak enables customers to develop AI workflows, process data, and provide predictions that are used to optimize critical business processes through APIs or integrated web applications. It also provides a new breed of AI-based decisioning applications that enable business users to make highly complex decisions such as planning inventory and optimizing product pricing decisions. Now as part of UiPath, Peak's solutions can scale globally and reach new industries, allowing customers and stakeholders the opportunity for continued growth and innovation. In turn, Peak's focus on accelerating AI adoption in sectors like retail and manufacturing will enable UiPath to accelerate market growth and deliver vertical-oriented, next-generation AI-driven agentic applications with intelligence powered by LLMs. "Joining forces with UiPath is the perfect next step for Peak at this stage of our journey, and I couldn't be more excited. As automation and agentic AI converge, we're entering a new era of possibilities for the enterprise," said Richard Potter, CEO & Co-Founder of Peak. "UiPath's global reach, deep enterprise expertise, and unwavering commitment to AI innovation will enable us to accelerate our vision -- empowering businesses with specialized decision-making AIs at scale. We are incredibly proud of what we've built, and as part of UiPath, we look forward to delivering even greater value to our customers while pushing the boundaries of what's possible with AI in the enterprise." Peak will further enhance the UiPath agentic automation platform. For example, organizations must meet stringent requirements for complex calculations in a variety of business processes. Businesses require accurate analysis and predictions they can trust, and Peak's solutions will form the backbone of new Pricing and Inventory Agents for UiPath customers. Peak's broader Decision Intelligence capabilities will also factor into the orchestration capabilities in the UiPath agentic automation platform, allowing for autonomous processes based on contextual customer data. Customers of both UiPath and Peak will now have the opportunity to realize increased revenue and margin improvement with the combined technologies. UiPath and Peak have already been able to provide such opportunities for success through their existing partnership. For example, UiPath and Peak transformed the quoting pricing process for Heidelberg Materials, based in the United Kingdom and one of the world's largest building materials manufacturers. The solution uses automation to collate data from hundreds of data points, leverages AI to determine an optimal quote for a given customer, and informs sales professionals. With this automated end-to-end process, Heidelberg Materials is experiencing much greater sales team efficiency through faster quotation times and increased conversion rates. About UiPath UiPath (NYSE: PATH) develops AI technology that mirrors human intelligence with ever-increasing sophistication, transforming how businesses operate, innovate, and compete. The UiPath Platform™ accelerates the shift toward a new era of agentic automation -- one where agents, robots, people, and models integrate seamlessly to enable autonomous processes and smarter decision making. With a focus on security, accuracy, and resiliency, UiPath is committed to shaping a world where AI enhances human potential and revolutionizes industries. For more information, visit www.uipath.com.