LayerX makes use of AI to chop endeavor back-office workload, rankings $100M in Collection B by way of NewsFlicks

Growing old demographics, exertions shortages, the adoption of GenAI, and the 2023 implementation of e-invoicing are using firms to automate finance, tax, procurement, and HR in Japan. But handiest 16% of virtual transformations be triumphant, and that’s handiest 4–11% in conventional industries. The primary boundaries? Susceptible management dedication, a inflexible tradition, and a loss of virtual ability. LayerX provides an AI SaaS platform to lend a hand enterprises scale back-office automation.

LayerX, a Jap AI SaaS startup that permits companies to chop back-office workload, has raised $100 million in a Collection B spherical led by way of Era Go Ventures (TCV), marking the U.S. fund’s first funding in a Jap startup.

The corporate declined to reveal its valuation, however mentioned each the valuation and the dimensions of the spherical are a number of the greatest ever raised by way of a seven-year-old Jap startup on the Collection B degree. Different buyers, together with MUFG Financial institution, Mitsubishi UFJ Innovation Companions, JAFCO Staff, Keyrock Capital, Coreline Undertaking, and JP Funding, additionally joined the Collection B spherical, bringing the entire raised to $192.2 million.

The startup’s key choices come with Bakuraku, a platform that automates company spending workflows, masking expense control, bill processing, and company card operations — for greater than 15,000 firms; Alterna, a retail virtual securities funding platform advanced in partnership with Mitsui & Co.; and Ai Body of workers, a generative AI resolution designed to streamline workflows and harness endeavor knowledge.

Based in 2018 by way of serial entrepreneur Yoshinori Fukushima, who studied device finding out on the College of Tokyo and up to now introduced the inside track app Gunosy, which was once later indexed at the Tokyo Inventory Alternate, LayerX grew out of considered one of his virtual transformation (DX) and blockchain tasks.

The founder introduced LayerX after figuring out an important bottleneck in Japan’s endeavor workflows: paper-based bill processing. This perception caused the workforce to pivot into SaaS with their AI-driven platform, Bakuraku, Fukushima instructed TechCrunch, including that the platform’s AI-native consumer revel in briefly received traction, serving to LayerX safe main strategic partnerships, together with with MUFG, or Mitsubishi UFJ Monetary Staff, and paving the best way for its newest investment spherical.

In spite of a wave of digitalization, many Jap firms nonetheless depend on paper and Excel for expense reimbursements and bill processing, the CEO persevered. Regionally, the startup competes with Cash Ahead Cloud Keihi, freee, and Rakuraku Seisan. Globally, its competitors come with SAP Concur, Rippling, Brex, Ramp, Spendesk, and Airbase. Within the AI Body of workers house, it faces festival from Harvey, Fukushima famous.

Bakuraku differentiates itself with an AI-driven consumer revel in. The corporate incessantly upgrades automation options like “auto-entry and file splitting”, whilst additionally making an investment in AI brokers and AI-enabled industry processing outsourcing (BPO). Its workforce comprises “greater than 12 former CTOs and a Kaggle Grandmaster.” Bakuraku provides a complete, built-in platform masking “expense control, bill processing, company playing cards, workflows, e-ledger compliance, attendance, and receivables—multi functional resolution,” Fukushima added.

The startup has closed its Collection B investment lower than two years after securing its Collection A in November 2023. Its signature platform, the Bakuraku Suite, has noticed vital enlargement, the seven-year-old corporate mentioned.

“We handed 10,000 shoppers in February 2024 and reached 15,000 by way of April 2025, with extra endeavor shoppers approaching board,” the CEO mentioned. “Headcount has additionally grown from about 220 workers in October 2023 to round 430 as of the top of July 2025.”

LayerX is on the right track to succeed in $68 million, identical to ¥10 billion, quicker than any SaaS corporate in Japan’s historical past, consistent with the corporate. “The expansion benchmark referred to as T2D3 was once completed forward of time table, and we predict to surpass the former home document, which took 8 years from product release, in underneath 5 years,” Fukushima mentioned.

Ai Body of workers counts Mitsui & Co. and MUFG Financial institution amongst its shoppers, whilst Bakuraku serves shoppers akin to Ippudo, IRIS Ohyama, the Imperial Lodge, and Sekisui Chemical.

Having a look ahead, the corporate objectives roughly $680 million (¥100 billion) in annual routine income by way of fiscal 12 months 2030, with kind of part anticipated to return from its AI agent industry. It additionally plans to develop its team of workers to round 1,000 workers by way of 2028.