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 primary obstacles? Weak management dedication, a inflexible tradition, and an absence of digital expertise. LayerX provides an AI SaaS platform to assist enterprises scale back-office automation.
LayerX, a Japanese AI SaaS startup that allows companies to chop back-office workload, has raised $100 million in a Sequence 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 stated 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 Sequence B stage. Different traders, together with MUFG Financial institution, Mitsubishi UFJ Innovation Companions, JAFCO Group, Keyrock Capital, Coreline Enterprise, and JP Funding, additionally joined the Sequence B spherical, bringing the overall raised to $192.2 million.
The startup’s key choices embrace Bakuraku, a platform that automates company spending workflows, protecting 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 answer designed to streamline workflows and harness enterprise information.
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 major bottleneck in Japan’s enterprise workflows: paper-based bill processing. This perception prompted the group to pivot into SaaS with their AI-driven platform, Bakuraku, Fukushima instructed TechCrunch, including that the platform’s AI-native person expertise rapidly gained traction, serving to LayerX safe main strategic partnerships, together with with MUFG, or Mitsubishi UFJ Monetary Group, and paving the best way 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 house, it faces competitors from Harvey, Fukushima famous.
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Bakuraku differentiates itself with an AI-driven person expertise. The corporate constantly upgrades automation options like “auto-entry and document splitting”, whereas additionally investing in AI brokers and AI-enabled enterprise processing outsourcing (BPO). Its group contains “more than 12 former CTOs and a Kaggle Grandmaster.” Bakuraku provides a complete, built-in platform protecting “expense management, invoice processing, corporate cards, workflows, e-ledger compliance, attendance, and receivables—all in one solution,” Fukushima added.
The startup has closed its Sequence B funding lower than two years after securing its Sequence A in November 2023. Its signature platform, the Bakuraku Suite, has seen important progress, the seven-year-old firm stated.
“We passed 10,000 customers in February 2024 and reached 15,000 by April 2025, with more enterprise clients coming on board,” the CEO stated. “Headcount has also grown from about 220 employees in October 2023 to around 430 as of the end of July 2025.”
LayerX is on observe to succeed in $68 million, equal to ¥10 billion, sooner than any SaaS firm in Japan’s historical past, based on the corporate. “The growth benchmark known as T2D3 was achieved ahead of schedule, and we expect to surpass the previous domestic record, which took eight years from product launch, in under five years,” Fukushima stated.
Ai Workforce counts Mitsui & Co. and MUFG Financial institution amongst its purchasers, whereas Bakuraku serves clients similar 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 12 months 2030, with roughly half anticipated to return from its AI agent enterprise. It additionally plans to develop its workforce to round 1,000 workers by 2028.
