Based in Belgium Odoo decided to use open source tools to attack the enterprise resource planning (ERP) software market, taking on giants like SAP. A few decades later, the company is now raising €500 million in secondary investments – or about $527 million at current exchange rates – led by CapitalG (Alphabet’s venture fund) and Sequoia Capital, as well as by other investors.

The new financing sees its valuation rise to 5 billion euros ($5.26 billion). Yes, you read that correctly.

Odoo hasn’t needed to raise primary capital for eight years, because with over five million users and growing at 40% per year, business is very good indeed. It is expected to exceed 650 million euros ($685 million) in billings over the next 12 months and aims to hit the cool figure of 1 billion euros ($1.05 billion) by 2027. It was previously valued at 3.2 billion euros ($3.37 billion) before this. round.

So why is Odoo raising a large amount of money now? The company said the investment would be used to accelerate R&D and product development – ​​likely with an eye toward how AI could disrupt business-as-usual ERP operations.

As we reported recently, traditional ERP software tools – typically provided by IT system vendors – are under attack by AI. Cogna is a British startup that raised $15 million to enable AI to write enterprise software applications itself, for example.

Odoo, founded in April 2002, is the brainchild of Fabien Pinckaers, who founded the company from his farm. He now lives in India, where he runs the company.

Pinckaers said CNBC is in no rush to take the company public, despite its high valuation and revenue.

Pinckaers built Odoo from humble beginnings of open source project to a business software giant that includes more than 80 applications covering a range of functions such as accounting, CRM, manufacturing and marketing, as well as an app store of more than 50,000 applications developed by the community, serving a large community of developers and partners.

The majority of Odoo’s activities concern open source (free access) software, of which 20% comes from paid licensed software (i.e. its paid “Odoo Enterprise” products) for users who want additional features, for example.

“Fabien and his team have built a first-of-its-kind company from their ambitious vision of a unified suite of tightly integrated business applications,” said Alex Nichols, partner at CapitalG, in a statement accompanying the financing.

Writing on his company blog, Pinckaers added: “ERPs are traditionally expensive and resource-intensive to implement, and often fail to meet the real needs and evolving requirements of SMEs. We have developed a unique value proposition that plays a central role in the market.

Odoo last raised money in 2014, when it launched a $10 million Series B round.

Alkeon, AVP, BlackRock, HarbourVest Partners and Mubadala Investment Company are also participating in this rare new round.

Previous investors include Noshaq, Summit Partners and Wallonie Entreprendre, all of whom sold secondary shares to CapitalG and Sequoia as part of this round. Summit will remain Odoo’s largest institutional shareholder.