Scribe, a startup that helps workers use business applications more efficiently, has closed a $75 million funding round led by StepStone.

TechCrunch reported today that the Series C investment also included the participation of Redpoint Ventures, Tiger Global and other returning backers. It values Scribe at $1.3 billion. That’s reportedly five times what the company was worth following its last funding round in early 2024.

Teaching employees how to use work applications can be a highly time-consuming task for information technology teams. Administrators have to provide guidance not only the first time a new hire launches an application, but also whenever there are significant feature changes. The more employees use an application, the more time the task requires.

Scribe, officially Colony Labs Inc., offers an artificial intelligence platform that automates the process. It enables workers to record how they go about performing a task in an application using a desktop client or a browser extension. Scribe automatically turns the collected data into a guide that other employees can use to learn how to perform the task.

Scribe-generated guides include screenshots of the relevant interface sections. According to the company, its platform automatically removes any sensitive business data that may be shown in the screenshots before broadly sharing them with employees. If the workers who prepare a task guide recorded unnecessary or erroneous steps, they can remove them before publishing the walkthrough. 

Scribe makes it possible to share a newly created guide as a PDF, a knowledge base article or via a third-party service. Additionally, companies can turn guidelines into a walkthrough overlaid on the interface of the application being explained. Whenever a learner completes one of the steps involved in a task, the walkthrough displays a visual cue that highlights the next action.

Onboarding new employees is not the only task that Scribe promises to speed up. When there are multiple ways to complete a task in an application, companies can create a guide that outlines the fastest, most reliable method. Scribe says that creating such standardized procedures can save 35 hours per worker per month while reducing errors.

Besides speeding up back-office work, the platform also lends itself to customer service automation. Software companies can use Scribe to create self-service interface walkthroughs for their users. Such walkthroughs can reduce the number of support requests that users send to the customer support team.

The company disclosed on occasion of the new funding round that its platform is used by workers at 94% of the Fortune 500. Its installed base also includes more than 77,000 other organizations. Those customers have used its platform to generate documentation for more than 10 million tasks.

Scribe will reportedly use the funding to launch a new tool called Scribe Optimize. It maps out how employees go about performing common business tasks and identifies time-consuming steps that can be automated with AI. The tool could put Scribe into more direct competition with Celonis SE, which provides similar features for identifying automation opportunities. 

Image: Scribe