Developer tooling is altering quickly with AI. So corporations which might be making it simpler to undertake AI of their workflows are seeing a growth of consideration. After a startup known as n8n (pronounced “enay-ten”) pivoted its workflow automation platform to turn out to be extra AI-friendly in 2022, it mentioned it noticed its revenues enhance 5X, doubling within the final two months alone.
Now on the again of that development, TechCrunch has confirmed that n8n has raised €55 million ($60 million) in funding on a valuation sources near the corporate inform us is within the area of €250 million ($270 million).
Berlin-based n8n mentioned it now has greater than 3,000 enterprise prospects and round 200,000 lively customers on its books. The startup can be utilizing this Sequence B to proceed investing in tech and to increase in newer markets just like the U.S., house to greater than half of n8n’s person base. The corporate doesn’t disclose revenues, and that buyer quantity consists of each free and paying customers, in addition to these taking short-term and longer-term subscriptions.
Highland Europe is main this newest spherical, with HV Capital and former backers Sequoia, Felicis, and Harpoon additionally collaborating. Sequoia led the seed spherical for n8n in 2020; Felicis the Sequence A in 2021.
The startup, based in 2019, picked up traction in its early years from developer groups that have been searching for low-code and no-code automation options to make it simpler to sew functions collectively in methods with out a whole lot of onerous coding.
It picked up consideration for one more motive, too: n8n had constructed a repute by being intently tied to the idea of “truthful code.”
Truthful code is a development of open supply. Software program builders use open supply code without spending a dime, however after they need to commercialize work constructed on prime of it, it establishes ideas for compensating the open supply creators or group. Jan Oberhauser, the founder and CEO of n8n, got here up with the thought and runs a website devoted to truthful code.
However whereas n8n itself is constructed on truthful code and leans into the open supply group to develop by phrase of mouth — it has greater than 70,000 “stars” on GitHub — the corporate says that it was weaving in AI that grew to become its rocket ship.
AI, and specifically generative AI, is a transparent complement to automation — one thing that shut rivals like Tines and Workato have additionally embraced, as have others within the wider automation world like UiPath.
If automation and low-code approaches have erased a few of the busy work of pulling collectively how completely different apps or providers labored collectively, generative AI brings even much less technicality into the combo.
A 12 months and a half in the past, Oberhauser mentioned, “we might see this AI factor coming at us.” He rapidly surmised that the candy spot could be to work it into its merchandise, to begin to cut back the quantity of labor it took builders to implement automations by turning directions into pure language.
“It’s a immediate to construct workflow,” is how Oberhauser describes it. “Individuals don’t actually need to put in writing 50 traces of code to combine the performance of, say, sending an e-mail.” Now in pure language, you’ll be able to write “get info from X and ship it to Y,” he mentioned. “We see the worth in making modifications to that extra simply.”
The product was constructed with a mix of LLMs in thoughts, and the thought is that if finish customers are already constructing providers utilizing one LLM or one other, it may be swapped in to work with n8n’s platform. And like numerous different developer-focused platforms, n8n has a reasonably in depth contributor group that’s lively on platforms like GitHub, will get concerned in boards to assist different builders with their questions, and builds and makes use of workflow templates constructed by others (n8n additionally has pre-built numerous workflow templates).
Even with all of the hype and hope round synthetic intelligence and GenAI lately, the AI-powered model of n8n took some time to stay, with nearly no take-up in any respect at first. Then final 12 months, there was a sudden a tipping level.
Why? Maybe the burden of a few traits coming collectively. There was the burst of chatter round AI in coding, with corporations like Poolside, Codeium, and Magic all elevating massive cash inside months of one another. After which inside finish customers themselves, the mantra to determine the way to use AI additionally grew to become louder.
However there’s a whole lot of hype and speak on the market, too, and so finally n8n’s ease of use and usefulness appears to be what has sealed the cope with customers, but additionally buyers.
“Everyone seems to be attempting to leverage AI however struggling to seek out sensible use instances,” David Blyghton, the overall companion at Highland who led the spherical, instructed me over a telephone name. “The design, scale, and throughput of n8n is what permits folks to undertake it.”
Oberhauser admits that though “it took some time for the market to catch up,” now he says that round 75% of all of n8n’s prospects are utilizing the AI instruments they’ve constructed.
