Coupa Is B2B’s Next Unicorn

The procurement and treasury management services of Coupa have caught the attention of some of the largest names in B2B, including NetSuite and American Express Global Business Travel. Now, the Software-as-a-Service firm is catching the attention of investors, and industry experts say that Coupa’s latest financial backing means the firm is B2B’s newest unicorn.

Reports published Monday (June 1) revealed that Coupa has raised $80 million from a variety of investors, including T. Rowe Price Associates, Iconiq Capital and Premji Invest. The funding brings the total amount of financial backing received by Coupa to $167.5 million.

More importantly, the latest funding round has pushed Coupa into the $1 billion valuation club, signaling just how lucrative the B2B software and cloud services market is becoming.

Coupa CEO Rob Bernshteyn, however, seemed to focus more on how the SaaS firm will use the new funding than the potential for a billion-dollar valuation. “This financing allows Coupa to continue investing our go-to-market capacity and further expand our market-leading product portfolio and cloud innovations,” he said in a statement. “With our cloud spend management solutions we are redefining the value software should deliver to businesses and changing how customers define success from enterprise software solutions..”

Through the company’s various partnerships, Coupa has expanded its services throughout the U.S. and EU. The new funding, Bernshteyn added, will help propel ventures in Asia, Latin America and Australia as well.

The success of Coupa’s SaaS, which offers procurement, invoice, inventory, expense and other management services for businesses, is indicative of a larger trend that analysts predict will result in increased spending on cloud software enterprise solutions. A study published by Cowen & Company last week found that more than three-quarters of businesses say they have already meaningfully adopted cloud technology into their operations, and that even more aspects of their businesses could be migrated to the cloud.