Munich — In a Series C finan­cing round, Munich-based startup Perso­nio raised $75 million. This brings the total invest­ment volume of the company, which was only foun­ded in 2015, to $130 million. Since the new invest­ment, the company has been valued at a total of $500 million — half­way to beco­ming a unicorn.

The finan­cing round was announ­ced back in Decem­ber, and has now been comple­ted. Leading this Series C round is Accel, an inter­na­tio­nal inves­tor with roots in Sili­con Valley. Accel has alre­ady inves­ted in compa­nies such as Slack and Face­book and helped strea­ming service Spotify go public.

In addi­tion to Accel, Lightspeed Venture Part­ners and Lars Dalgaard are also joining the HR soft­ware provi­der. Dalgaard is the foun­der and CEO of Success­fac­tors. He sold his cloud-based HR soft­ware to SAP in 2011 for $3.4 billion, but he is going private with Perso­nio. The Munich-based startup’s previous backers, Index Ventures, North­zone, Global Foun­ders Capi­tal and Pius Capi­tal, also parti­ci­pa­ted again in the funding round.

Demand from the inves­tor side was high
Actually, a new finan­cing round had been plan­ned for a much later date, Hanno Renner (photo), CEO and co-foun­­der of Perso­nio, announ­ced. The invest­ment was only made because of the high demand from inves­tors. Howe­ver, he is very plea­sed to know that the finan­cing round has brought other such expe­ri­en­ced part­ners to the startup’s side.

The invest­ment is prima­rily inten­ded to further the inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion of the soft­ware provi­der. Curr­ently, Perso­nio has nearly 2,000 custo­mers in over 40 count­ries, accor­ding to the company. The company plans to have 700 employees at three sites by 2020.