LayerX uses AI to cut enterprise back-office workload, scores $100M in Series B

Getting older demographics, labor shortages, the adoption of GenAI, and the 2023 implementation of e-invoicing are driving firms to automate finance, tax, procurement, and HR in Japan. But solely 16% of digital transformations succeed, and that’s solely 4–11% in conventional industries. The principle limitations? Weak management dedication, a inflexible tradition, and an absence of digital expertise. LayerX presents an AI SaaS platform to assist enterprises scale back-office automation.

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

The corporate declined to reveal its valuation, however mentioned each the valuation and the scale of the spherical are among the many largest ever raised by a seven-year-old Japanese startup on the Collection B stage. Different buyers, together with MUFG Financial institution, Mitsubishi UFJ Innovation Companions, JAFCO Group, Keyrock Capital, Coreline Enterprise, and JP Funding, additionally joined the Collection B spherical, bringing the whole raised to $192.2 million.

The startup’s key choices embrace Bakuraku, a platform that automates company spending workflows, masking expense administration, bill processing, and company card operations — for greater than 15,000 firms; Alterna, a retail digital securities funding platform developed in partnership with Mitsui & Co.; and Ai Workforce, a generative AI resolution designed to streamline workflows and harness enterprise knowledge.

Based in 2018 by serial entrepreneur Yoshinori Fukushima, who studied machine studying on the College of Tokyo and beforehand launched the information app Gunosy, which was later listed on the Tokyo Inventory Alternate, LayerX grew out of certainly one of his digital transformation (DX) and blockchain initiatives.

The founder launched LayerX after figuring out a big bottleneck in Japan’s enterprise workflows: paper-based bill processing. This perception prompted the crew to pivot into SaaS with their AI-driven platform, Bakuraku, Fukushima informed Trendster, including that the platform’s AI-native consumer expertise shortly gained traction, serving to LayerX safe main strategic partnerships, together with with MUFG, or Mitsubishi UFJ Monetary Group, and paving the way in which for its newest funding spherical.

Regardless of a wave of digitalization, many Japanese firms nonetheless depend on paper and Excel for expense reimbursements and bill processing, the CEO continued. Domestically, the startup competes with Cash Ahead Cloud Keihi, freee, and Rakuraku Seisan. Globally, its rivals embrace SAP Concur, Rippling, Brex, Ramp, Spendesk, and Airbase. Within the AI Workforce area, it faces competitors from Harvey, Fukushima famous.

Bakuraku differentiates itself with an AI-driven consumer expertise. The corporate repeatedly upgrades automation options like “auto-entry and doc splitting”, whereas additionally investing in AI brokers and AI-enabled enterprise processing outsourcing (BPO). Its crew contains “greater than 12 former CTOs and a Kaggle Grandmaster.” Bakuraku presents a complete, built-in platform masking “expense administration, bill processing, company playing cards, workflows, e-ledger compliance, attendance, and receivables—multi functional resolution,” Fukushima added.

The startup has closed its Collection B funding lower than two years after securing its Collection A in November 2023. Its signature platform, the Bakuraku Suite, has seen vital development, the seven-year-old firm mentioned.

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

LayerX is on monitor to succeed in $68 million, equal to ¥10 billion, quicker than any SaaS firm in Japan’s historical past, in accordance with the corporate. “The expansion benchmark often called T2D3 was achieved forward of schedule, and we count on to surpass the earlier home document, which took eight years from product launch, in beneath 5 years,” Fukushima mentioned.

Ai Workforce counts Mitsui & Co. and MUFG Financial institution amongst its shoppers, whereas Bakuraku serves prospects equivalent to Ippudo, IRIS Ohyama, the Imperial Resort, and Sekisui Chemical.

Trying ahead, the corporate targets roughly $680 million (¥100 billion) in annual recurring income by fiscal yr 2030, with roughly half anticipated to return from its AI agent enterprise. It additionally plans to develop its workforce to round 1,000 staff by 2028.