Celonis was founded in 2011 by Alexander Rinke, Bastian Nominacher, and Martin Klenk while they were students at the Technical University of Munich. Their thesis project analyzed event logs from enterprise systems to visualize how business processes actually worked — and they discovered that reality rarely matched the theoretical process flows.
The company’s Execution Management System (EMS) ingests data from ERP, CRM, and other enterprise systems to create a digital twin of an organization’s processes. It shows exactly how purchase orders, invoices, customer tickets, and other workflows move through the organization — including bottlenecks, deviations, and inefficiencies that are invisible without data analysis.
Process mining technology analyzes event logs automatically. If a purchase order took 47 days instead of 5, Celonis shows exactly where it got stuck and why. The platform then recommends or automates actions to fix the problem — rerouting approvals, triggering reminders, or suggesting process redesigns.
Celonis raised $1 billion in Series D funding in 2021 at a $13 billion valuation, making it one of the most valuable enterprise software startups in Europe. Investors include Arena Holdings, Durable Capital Partners, and T. Rowe Price.
The company serves more than 2,500 enterprise customers, including Siemens, L’Oreal, Uber, and AstraZeneca. Celonis integrates deeply with SAP — many of its customers use it to optimize SAP-based processes — as well as Salesforce, ServiceNow, and other enterprise platforms.
Rinke, Nominacher, and Klenk serve as co-CEOs. Celonis employs more than 3,000 people across offices in Munich, New York, and other global locations.
