Personio raises $270 million

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

At the beginning of the year, Personio became a unicorn, and now the start-up has received a further 270 million US dollars in an early Series E financing round. The round is led by Greenoaks Capital Partners and also includes Altimeter from Silicon Valley and New York-based investor Alkeon Capital. Existing investors such as Index Ventures, Accel and Northzone are also participating. This gives Personio a valuation of 6.3 billion US dollars.

"The new investment underlines the continued rapid growth of Personio and the immense market potential, but also the belief in our vision for the future of HR tech," says Hanno Renner, founder of Personio. He adds: "Although I see this financing round as an important milestone, we are still at the very beginning of our journey." With the financing round, the HR start-up is also announcing its intention to establish a new software category for its customers: People Workflow Automation is designed to help small and medium-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 are proud to be able to accompany Personio on this exciting phase of their journey and look forward to a long-term partnership." He believes that the "current step is just the beginning for Personio and its ambitious goals."

Personio has been in existence for six years and has raised half a billion US dollars to date. The money from the previous financing round has not yet been used up, but this gives Personio "the security of being able to implement our business strategy in peace until 2023 without any distractions", Renner told 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 financing round, which according to Der Spiegel will lead to a valuation of eight billion US dollars for the fintech, is confirmed.