Bucharest-based Druid raises USD 30 million to accelerate international expansion

Druid, an end-to-end platform for building, deploying, and scaling AI-driven conversational business applications founded by Liviu Drăgan, has secured USD 30 million as part of a series B round led by TQ Ventures, with participation from new investors Smedvig Capital, Endeavor, and Verve Ventures, and existing investors GapMinder, Hoxton Ventures and Karma Ventures.

The funding will be used to continue accelerating Druid's international expansion, particularly its footprint in the US market, which already accounts for 60% of its current revenue, the company said.

Druid previously raised USD 15 mln in early May 2022, and USD 2.5 mln in January 2021.

In 2022, the company increased its annual recurring revenue by 2.5 times compared to 2021 and is predicting a further growth of three times this year.

Kmart, Liberty Global, Texas Children's Hospital, White Castle, NHS, Auchan, Georgia Southern University, Société Générale, Erste Group, BNP Paribas, and Axa are among the companies that have integrated Druid's Conversational Business Applications platform.

Druid has recently grown its global team by 60% and onboarded a several ex-UiPath executives in strategic roles: Kedar Dani, ex-Global VP to design, to assist with go-to-market strategy; Vargha Moayed, ex-Chief Strategy Officer, to provide strategic advice to the CEO; and Mihai Faur, CIO of UiPath, to become an independent board member.

Druid's platform gives enterprises the tools to build and design conversational business applications (CBA) to provide the most natural employee-customer experience. The Druid suite can be applied in any existing technology environment without replacing prior investments in ERP, CRM, RPA or other digital tools. Moreover, Druid's recent integration with ChatGPT, via Microsoft's Azure OpenAI Service, makes generative AI enterprise-ready and secure, the company said.

"Amid the fanfare around conversational and Generative AI, Druid stood out to us as a category leader. We were pleased to discover through our research how much current customers value the platform and how large a problem Druid is solving for prospective customers. We are honored to lead this round and partner with Liviu and the Druid team," Schuster Tanger, co-managing partner at TQ Ventures, said.

"Druid capitalizes on recent advancements in generative AI, which seamlessly integrate into our conversational business applications platform. We believe our platform will, for large international enterprises, ignite a new era of productivity and tangible business outcomes. Bolstered by our latest investment round and against the backdrop of this technological revolution, we are well positioned and excited to work hard to offer technology solutions that empower our customers to unlock maximum value", Liviu Drăgan, CEO of Duid, said.