Workflow automation startup AirSlate today announced that it raised $40 million from backers including Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, General Catalyst, and HighSage Ventures. The company says the funds, which come as AirSlate closes on a tranche in additional investment, will enable product functionality expansion and international growth as well as hiringwithin the marketing and sales organizations.

In 2018, when McKinsey surveyed 1,500 executives across industries and regions, 66% responded that addressing skills gaps related to automation and digitization was a “top-ten” priority. According to market research firm Fact.MR, small- and medium-sized enterprises are expected to adopt business workflow automation at scale, creating a market of opportunity of more than US$1.6 billion between 2017 and 2026.

AirSlate launched a PDF editor — its first product — in 2008. In 2015, the company expanded into software integrations for customer relationship management software and apps, followed by an e-signature management offering in 2017.

Above: AirSlate’s dashboard.

Image Credit: AirSlate

Now, AirSlate’s mulit-cloud platform lets customers automate whole parts of backend processes using single, no-code solutions. Powered by document process automation and robotic process automation technologies, AirSlate can help to negotiate contracts, facilitate payments and surveys, and get documents e-signed by generating prefilled documents, sending reminders and notifications, extracting data and updating records, and implementing conditional workflow routing.

AirSlate leverages rules-based bots that integrate with existing services to automate approvals, data analytics, alerts, assign permissions, and data transfer. Customers can’t create custom bots, but they’re able to request bots for specific tasks from the AirSlate team, with a turnaround time that averages about a week.

For companies in need of a fully managed offering, there’s AirSlate Business Cloud, which spans PDF editing, e-signature workflows, and robotic and document process automation. Business Cloud subscribers can author new (or edit existing) PDF documents, create and manage workflows, and assign roles and send out documents for e-signing. They also gain access to an online library of over 85,000 state-specific legal forms including non-disclosure agreements, real estate forms, wills, and customer contracts.

Onboarding in AirSlate has companies create workforces for teams. Employees join the workspace via email and distribute workflows among themselves. Within the workspace, they can navigate team documents and agreement flows, collaborating as tasks require it.

AirSlate counts over 20 million people among its users across customers like the Australian government, Xerox, CBS Sports, GoFundMe, and Amgen. (That’s up from 6 million users as of 2015.) This year, the company expects annual recurring revenue to surpass $100 million sometimes this year.

“AirSlate’s no-code ethos requires no technical expertise to use and gives everyone the opportunity to design and implement beautiful, personalized, secure, and digitally-executable customer and employee experiences,” cofounder and CEO Borya Shakhnovich, who founded online science research community Orwick prior to joining AirSlate, said in a statement. “Now more than ever, we see huge demand from businesses of all sizes, from very small to enterprise, that need the agility and efficiency of the no-code AirSlate platform to drive their business.”

The funding announced today is fourteen-year-old, 700-employee Boston-based AirSlate’s second public round. It brings the company’s total raised to date to $80 million following a $30 million series A in December 2018 from “leading growth investors.”