• Enterprise software firm Celonis has raised $1 billion in a new round of funding, valuing the company at an eye-watering $11 billion.
• Celonis is a pioneer of "process mining," which analyzes data from a company's event logs to identify problems with certain processes.
• It's the latest sign of how investors are gushing over enterprise software businesses with recurring revenue streams.

LONDON — Enterprise software firm Celonis on Wednesday said it had raised $1 billion in a new round of funding, valuing the company at an eye-watering $11 billion.

The new investment was co-led by Durable Capital Partners and T. Rowe Price Associates, with Franklin Templeton and Splunk Ventures also participating. Celonis is now worth more than four times the $2.5 billion it was last privately valued at in a 2019 cash injection.

Founded in 2011 by three friends in Munich, Germany, Celonis began life as a college project for consulting businesses on improving their IT processes.

Celonis pioneered a technology called "process mining," which analyzes data from a company's event logs to identify problems with certain processes and figure out ways to streamline them.

Last year, the company launched a new platform called "execution management," which gives clients access to a dashboard showing real-time data on processes and the ability to automate certain tasks.

"As companies grow, inefficiency creeps in and business execution becomes a struggle," Alex Rinke, co-CEO and co-founder of Celonis, said in a statement. "Employees feel it, customers feel it, and it leads to significant financial losses and environmental impact."

"We are thrilled and honored that the rise of execution management is defining a new software stack that helps customers reimagine how they execute," he added. "It is the biggest shift in software since cloud computing."

The company says it's growing by triple digits each year, boasting a clientele featuring the likes of Dell, L'Oreal and Pfizer. The New York and Munich-headquartered firm now has more than 1,300 employees globally.

In addition to announcing a huge funding deal, Celonis said it had appointed Carlos Kirjner, formerly vice president of finance at Google, as its new chief financial officer ahead of an anticipated initial public offering.

It's the latest sign of how investors are gushing over enterprise software businesses with recurring revenue streams and comes at a time when the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated a digital shift for businesses of all shapes and sizes.

A slew of software companies have gone public in the U.S. over the past year. Romanian-founded firm UiPath went public in a blockbuster debut on the New York Stock Exchange in April, while cloud company Snowflake listed last September.