Personio, the Munich-based HR and payroll software company, announced on October 6, 2026 that it has acquired Circula, a Berlin spend-management platform used by more than 3,000 mid-sized European businesses. Neither side disclosed the price or other financial terms. Trending Topics and Personio described it as the largest acquisition in Personio's history.
Circula will keep its product and brand, now operating as "Circula by Personio", and its team moves over to Personio. The product will remain available on its own for companies that do not use Personio's HR software.
The two companies had worked together for several years through an integration that synchronises employee data between the HR system and Circula's expense tools. The deal turns that partnership into common ownership.
What Circula built
Nikolai Skatchkov and Roman Leicht founded Circula in Berlin in 2017. The company started with employee expense reporting and travel costs and grew into a broader spend-management suite covering expense claims, corporate cards, accounts payable and tax-optimised employee benefits.
A large part of its pitch is German tax and accounting compliance. Its software captures receipts, checks the data and applies tax rules to travel expenses and benefits, and it connects closely with DATEV, the accounting software used by many German tax advisers. Personio said those DATEV connections will continue and that the companies plan to merge them into a single product over time.
Circula reports about 250,000 users. Customers named in coverage of the deal include Aston Martin, DATEV, Securitas and tonies.
“Spend management is one of the capabilities our customers ask us for most, and it's complex to get right in Europe.”
Why Personio is buying
Personio, founded in 2015, says more than 16,000 companies with a combined 1.6 million employees use its software. Its payroll product handles taxes on base salaries, while Circula calculates the tax treatment of expenses and benefits. Putting the two together means salary, reimbursements, benefits and card spending can run through one system.
Personio CEO and co-founder Hanno Renner said spend management is among the features customers ask for most and is difficult to get right across Europe. Personio presented the combination as the first of its kind in Europe; Startbase noted that the company did not cite independent data to support that claim.
There is already a shared customer base to start with. More than 500 companies, including Everphone, About You and Westwing, use both products. Skatchkov told customers that the DATEV integration, the existing integration with Personio and Circula's in-house expertise would all stay in place.
Circula is Personio's second acquisition of 2026. In the spring it bought aurio, a Munich recruiting AI startup.
The founders and the funding
Circula raised venture money in several rounds. Its €12 million (about $13 million) Series A in January 2022 brought in ALSTIN Capital, Peak and Storm Ventures, with existing investors Capnamic, Main Incubator and WENVEST Capital also taking part. At that time Peak said Circula had raised more than €20 million in total, had 50 staff and served around 1,000 customers.
In May 2025 the company added a €15 million (about $17 million) extension of its Series A, led by existing backers Alstin Capital, Capnamic Ventures, Peak, Wenvest Capital and Storm Ventures, with CIBC Innovation Banking participating. Circula said then that it had more than 2,800 customers and would put the money into AI-driven finance workflows.
Lincoln International acted as Circula's exclusive financial adviser on the sale.
A busy market for spend management
Personio is moving into a field already crowded with well-funded European companies. Trending Topics pointed to Pleo, valued at $4.7 billion in late 2021, Spendesk, which reached unicorn status in 2022, and Moss, which was valued at $1 billion this summer after a $30 million Series C.
Rather than compete with those players from scratch, Personio has bought a company whose customers already overlap heavily with its own, and which specialises in the German tax rules that make expense handling hard to standardise.
