Personio raises $270 million

With the current round of financing, the Munich-based company is worth over six billion US dollars, making it one of the most valuable start-ups in Germany. All of the money comes from the US.

At the beginning of the year, Personio rose to unicorn status, and now the start-up is receiving another 270 million US dollars in an early Series E financing round. The round is led by Greenoaks Capital Partners, with Silicon Valley's Altimeter and New York-based investor Alkeon Capital also participating. In addition, existing investors such as Index Ventures, Accel and Northzone are participating. This gives Personio a valuation of $6.3 billion.

"This new investment underscores Personio's continued rapid growth and immense market potential, as well as our belief in our vision for the future of HR tech," says Hanno Renner, founder of Personio. Adding, "While I consider this funding round an important milestone, we are still at the very beginning of our journey." That's because with the funding round, the HR startup also announces that it will establish a new software category for its customers: People Workflow Automation is designed to help small and mid-sized companies automate HR processes that were previously organized across different tools and teams. For example, Slack, MS Teams or Okta can be integrated. The money from the current round will go towards the further expansion of this software.

The new software has also convinced the founder of Greenoaks, Neil Mehta, to invest: "The introduction of the HR software category People Workflow Automation will make companies across Europe even more successful. We're proud to partner with Personio on this exciting stage of their journey and look forward to a long-term partnership." He thinks the "current move is just the beginning for Personio and its ambitious goals."

Personio has been around for six years and has raised half a billion dollars to date. The money from the previous funding round has not yet been used up, but this gives Personio "the security of being able to implement our business strategy calmly until 2023 without distractions," Renner tells Handelsblatt.

This makes Personio the second most valuable start-up in Germany behind Celonis, but it is likely to slip to third place if N26's current funding round, which according to Der Spiegel leads to a valuation of eight billion US dollars for the fintech, is confirmed.