Partech leads the $36M Series B round for M-Files

Partech today announced its involvement as lead investor in the new $36M financing round of M-Files, with participation from Finnish Industry Investment and Draper Esprit. M-Files provides solutions that dramatically improve how businesses manage documents and other information. The investment will further accelerate M-Files’ explosive growth and international expansion.

"Partech invested in M-Files not only because of their demonstrated track record of growth and success, enormous market potential and proven leadership, but also because we saw a unique vision for a new generation of solutions that goes beyond traditional document management and enterprise content management (ECM), and has the potential to transform the market", said Bruno Crémel, General Partner of Partech.

M-Files offers a unique new approach to enterprise content management. It relies indeed on a unique metadata-driven architecture that enables users to quickly find and access information based on its relevance, regardless of the system or repository in which it is stored. The M-Files approach also creates an “intelligent metadata layer” that overlays and unifies existing data repositories and core business systems, including Documentum, OpenText, SharePoint, Box, Salesforce, SAP and oth-ers. The new solution also employs state-of-the-art search, auto-classification and machine learning technologies that enable businesses to intelligently manage information based on its value, without migration or duplication, and without disturbing other core business processes and applications.

With thousands of organisations in over 100 countries (including AS, OMV and NBC Universal) using its EIM systems, M-Files has experienced a six-year compound growth rate of nearly 1,000 percent. The new investment will further accelerate sales and marketing activities, as well as expansion into new markets in North America, EMEA and APAC. The company will also focus on expanding and strengthening its network of global partners.

"We’re excited about working with the world-class team at Partech to accelerate our plans for sustained growth," said Miika Mäkitalo, CEO of M-Files Corporation. "Our recipe for success has always been to focus on the customer by designing and delivering solutions that are simple, secure and scalable. When you combine that with our ability to provide world-class professional services, it’s easy to see why our customers love us and why we're continuing to take market share away from even the largest entrenched competitors."

The investment in M-Files is the fifth investment of Partech's Growth Fund since its launch in January 2015, and follows the financing round of Brandwatch, the financing round of Freedompop and the financing round of Made.com. ‘With an average of one deal every quarter, our late-stage investment activities perfectly reflect the high-growth strategy on which we have embarked in recent years’, said Omri Benayoun, General Partner at Partech Ventures.

This investment also reinforces Partech's long-standing strategy of investing in software in the US and in Europe, with an increasing focus on the booming Nordic tech ecosystem. Success stories in software backed by Partech began more than 20 years ago with Business Objects and Informatica, then Cartesis, Five9 and Visicu, and continue today with portfolio companies at seed stage (e.g. Alkemics, Influans, Lima), venture stage (Atlantis Computing, GetInsured) and growth stage (Brandwatch, M-Files).