Lionel Sujay Vailshery
Research expert covering cloud computing and emerging tech industries
UiPath - statistics & facts
UiPath is a global software company now headquartered in New York City had its humble beginnings in a tiny apartment in Bucharest, Romania, in 2005 as DeskOver. The founders of this company, Daniel Dines and Marius Tîrcă, and a customer, found an innovative opportunity for RPA (robotic process automation) in information technology services. Large-scale enterprises in the early 2020s recognized RPA as an easy and affordable solution for digitalization of processes.
UiPath and RPA popularity
The true democratization of RPA was made possible with the technology getting affordable for small to medium-sized enterprises, with RPA being offered as-a-service instead of software licensing. The adoption of RPA by many businesses is highlighted in the UiPath’s revenue worldwide, which has been displaying rapid growth, reaching over 1.3 billion U.S. dollars in 2024. UiPath has been a publicly traded company and one of the top RPA vendors in the world after Microsoft.
What is RPA, and how does it work?
RPA refers to implementing a software technology to emulate human actions while interfacing with a digital system or software applications. These are also known as software robots that automate repetitive processes that humans handle. Such robots are faster, consistent, and need no breaks. This reduces employees' time spent on tedious, monotonous tasks that are taken over by the software robots and provides more time at work to focus on creative and stimulating tasks. The addition of generative artificial intelligence and natural language processing to RPA further democratizes the process.
Outlook
The advantage of RPA for companies not born in a cloud environment is that it could still automate their legacy products and processes. This would serve as an interim solution where the RPA market would grow rapidly until a point where many of the legacy solutions for enterprises would eventually migrate to the cloud. Given the progress of AI (artificial intelligence) in business process automation, it comes as no surprise that the current spending on RPA has begun to shift towards the AI market.
