Sources: low-code app development tool startup OutSystems raised $228.4M in October 2022 at a $4.3B valuation, 55% lower than February 2021's $9.5B valuation
Kenrick Cai / Forbes :
Context & Ripple Effects
OutSystems has been on a steady fundraising ladder — a $55M round in 2016, then $360M from KKR and Goldman Sachs in 2018 — before hitting its peak with a $150M round led by Abdiel Capital and Tiger Global in February 2021 at a $9.5B valuation. Forbes now reports that October 2022's $228.4M raise closed at $4.3B, a 55% markdown of that peak.
The reset lands on a low-code category that raised heavily through the top of the market: Retool's $20M Series C closed in December 2021 at a $1.85B pre-money valuation, and Appsmith pulled in a $41M Series B in mid-2022. OutSystems is the first of these names with a confirmed post-peak price, which makes it the reference point for how far the category's marks have come down.
First-order effects
- Investors from the February 2021 round — Abdiel Capital and Tiger Global among them — are carrying a paper loss of roughly 55% on their OutSystems stakes, while the October 2022 money bought in at the lower $4.3B price.
Second-order effects
- Retool and Appsmith now face a repriced comp: any future low-code raise gets benchmarked against OutSystems' $4.3B mark rather than 2021's $9.5B, pressuring their own valuations and making flat or down rounds the negotiating baseline for the category.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the 2021-vintage growth marks across low-code and adjacent enterprise app tooling unwind structurally — late-stage funds that deployed at peak prices absorb writedowns, and new rounds increasingly trade on current metrics instead of prior-round momentum.
The trend: Growth-stage software valuations set at the 2021 peak are being formally marked down round by round, with low-code tooling among the first categories to take a confirmed reset.