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Unqork, a New York-based software company pitching an enterprise no-code platform for the insurance, financial services and other industries, has secured $80 million in Series B financing led by CapitalG, the growth equity investment fund of Google parent company Alphabet (Mountain View, Calif.). Unqork will use the funds to drive expansion into new geographic and vertical markets and grow its engineering team, according to CEO Gary Hoberman. The latest round follows the April 2019 announcement of a $22 million Series A investment round led by Goldman Sachs Principal Strategic Investments.
James McGlennon, EVP and CIO, Liberty Mutual.
“We’ve started this no-code revolution in enterprise software,” comments Hoberman. “As a former CIO this was the pipe dream I imagined for 30 years. No vendor was able to achieve it, so we created it. We are able to provide software for running every aspect of an insurance company without writing code. Our top engineers create components that our customers can drag-and-drop visually to create any solution you can imagine. There’s no more generating code—so no more creating legacy technology.”
The funding round was led by CapitalG, as well as existing investors. Joining as new investors are funds and accounts under management by subsidiaries of BlackRock, Inc. (New York). To date, Unqork has raised more than $110 million in funding. Founded in 2017, the vendor’s customer base includes investor Goldman Sachs for both banking and insurance, as well as several major insurers, including Liberty Mutual, Nationwide, Principal, John Hancock and The Hanover.
Cracking the No-Code Problem
Laela Sturdy, General Partner, CapitalG, says she recognized Unqork’s product innovation and its ability to execute as key factors. “The idea of no-code application development has been a dream in the enterprise, but the technology has never been able to deliver for applications of a high complexity and scale,” she comments. “Unqork has cracked this problem and is uniquely positioned to enable digital transformation at scale.”
Laela Sturdy, General Partner, CapitalG
“We’re ecstatic to have CapitalG help power Unqork’s momentum for continued growth,” Hoberman says. “By building on our proven financial services and insurance successes, the additional funding will allow us to help deliver more of the best enterprise no-code technology and enable fully functional application development for top companies all over the world.”
“We had our choice of lead investors,” adds Hoberman. “Alphabet was incredible, their general partner coming on board, bringing google engineers to check out our technology. Their engineers see the value, and we’re looking forward to working with the Google cloud team. CapitalG will bring a whole new toolset from Google’s side.”
In a statement on the Series B round, Unqork cited several milestones the company has hit during 2019, including growing annual recurring revenue at a significant triple-digit rate over the past 12 months, driven by both significant new customer acquisition and also ARR expansion within its existing customer base. The company has gone from 30 to over 150 employees this year, and it recently moving to its fourth office in 18 months, taking over a 40,000 square foot space in Union Square, New York City.
Unqork is already operating globally, with clients in the U.S., Asia and South America. The new funding will be used to drive growth in new geographic and vertical segments, Hoberman affirms. “We’ll be opening up offices in Europe and Asia—based on customers asking us to move there,” he says. “For example, a healthcare company has asked us if we can take on that challenge. There’s no difference—the same core platform that Goldman Sachs or Liberty Mutual have adopted can be used for any market segment, from the government sector through healthcare, and we look to expand in both of those industries.”
Gary Hoberman, CEO, Unqork.
Hoberman says that Unqork has already helped customers develop solutions across the entire life and property/casualty insurance value chain, though individual customers have tended to bring in the company to address a particular “pain point.”
Unique Ability to Address Complexity of Insurance
Liberty Mutual, an early adopter of Unqork, has made significant internal investments in the platform, training large teams of creators to build applications in Unqork, according to the vendor. “Property and casualty insurance is a complex web of regulations, regional variations, and constantly changing rules and dynamics,” comments James McGlennon, EVP and CIO, Liberty Mutual. “We were the first to recognize Unqork’s unique ability to address this complexity and have since trained 50 employees to build and manage applications.”
Unqork reports that it has delivered more than 10,000 hours of training to customers on its platform. Several consultants have built practices to support clients’ Unqork initiatives, including Deloitte, KPMG, Virtusa and E&Y. “We have no professional services organization—we hope to empower our customers to create the software of the future to run their businesses,” Hoberman says.