Record investment: Celonis receives one billion US dollars

This makes the start-up an eleven-fold unicorn. The Munich-based company is also bringing a Google manager on board.

Celonis from Munich receives one billion US dollars in Series D. There has never been a higher sum in start-up Germany before. This increases the value of the company to eleven billion euros. Celonis is thus a "Decacon" - a unicorn at least ten times over - and the highest valued non-listed start-up in Germany.

Investors include the American VCs Durable Capital Partners and T. Rowe Price, as well as the investment company Franklin Templeton, Splunk Ventures from San Francisco and a group of other investors. Existing investors, including New York-based Arena Holdings, are also participating again. "Celonis is a rare gem that is at the center of one of the biggest technology trends of our time - modernizing businesses through data-driven, intelligent business decisions," said Henry Ellenbogen, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of Durable Capital Partners LP. "Celonis has massive market potential to create a new and modern way of managing companies."

Three students from the Technical University of Munich, Alexander Rinke, Martin Klenk and Bastian Nominacher, founded Celonis in 2011. The company, which now has 1,300 employees, offers process mining: All data from a company's IT system is analyzed. According to the company, this makes it easier to identify weaknesses and optimization potential. The company speaks of several thousand customers, including AstraZeneca, Bosch, Coca-Cola, Citibank, Dell, GSK, L'Oréal, Siemens, Uber and Vodafone.

"Celonis is a rare gem"

Henry Ellenbogen, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of Durable Capital Partners LP

Celonis is headquartered in Munich and New York and has 15 offices worldwide. Deutsche Bank plans to use the software to optimize 40 percent of its processes, saving more than 60 million euros. "Our customers were thrilled when they realized that with the Execution Management System they can now use their process data to run their business as efficiently as Amazon - without having to change anything in their underlying systems," says Bastian Nominacher, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Celonis.

The start-up has also announced the appointment of Carlos Kirjner as its new Chief Financial Officer for the upcoming growth steps. Kirjner was most recently Vice President of Finance at Google, where he oversaw the finances of the core business units - Google Ads, Google Search and Google Maps - which generate around 150 billion US dollars in revenue annually and employ tens of thousands of people. "Carlos Kirjner is a visionary leader with an impressive track record," says Nominacher. "He recognized some of the biggest industry trends long before others and has proven that he can act with agility in a dynamic environment."