It appears that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and New Enterprise Associates see a lot of growth potential in the emerging field of robotic process automation.

The two firms were today named as the lead investors in a $250 million round into Automation Anywhere Inc., one of this segment’s biggest players. The round values the San Jose, California-based company at a healthy $1.8 billion, three months after a competitor called UiPath Inc. achieved unicorn status as well.

Robotic process automation, or RPA, focuses on freeing up workers from the repetitive tasks involved in using business software. It has emerged as an alternative to traditional automation tools that must be integrated directly into an application to work. Implementing such integrations takes resources, as well as specialized skills in some cases, that companies often can’t afford to spare.

Automation Anywhere’s platform uses artificial intelligence to simplify the task. The software enables companies to create bots that can watch how workers interact with an application and, after a while, figure out to perform key tasks on their own. These bots then continue learning over time to improve their accuracy further.

“Customers tell us that traditional process automation technologies are capable of automating only about 20 percent of an enterprise’s business processes,” Automation Anywhere Chief Executive Officer Mihir Shukla (pictured) said in a statement. “We believe our Intelligent Digital Workforce Platform can automate up to 80 percent of these processes.”

A lot of high-profile companies have bought into Automation Anywhere’s vision so far. Google LLC, General Motors Co. and Mastercard Inc. are just three of the more than 1,000 organizations that the provider said use its platform. Automation Anywhere claims to be doubling revenue year-over-year thanks to continued demand.

The company will use today’s capital to maintain the current growth trajectory. Automation Anywhere has plans to expand internationally and develop new “specialized” machine learning capabilities for its platform.

It’s safe to assume those features will focus either on specific industries, or specific software. The business applications sold by the likes of SAP SE and Oracle Corp. might present a particularly good growth opportunity, since they’re not only widely used but also fairly complex.

Shukla spoke to theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s livestreaming video studio, at Automation Anywhere’s recent Imagine conference in New York City:

Image: SiliconANGLE