Aging demographics, labor shortages, the adoption of GenAI, and the 2023 implementation of e-invoicing are driving corporations to automate finance, tax, procurement, and HR in Japan. But only 16% of digital transformations succeed, and that’s solely 4–11% in conventional industries. The principle limitations? Weak management dedication, a inflexible tradition, and a scarcity of digital expertise. LayerX gives 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 Sequence B spherical led by Expertise 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 buyers, 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 whole raised to $192.2 million.
The startup’s key choices embody Bakuraku, a platform that automates company spending workflows, masking expense administration, bill processing, and company card operations — for greater than 15,000 corporations; 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 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 Change, LayerX grew out of considered 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 workforce to pivot into SaaS with their AI-driven platform, Bakuraku, Fukushima informed TechCrunch, 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 corporations 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 embody SAP Concur, Rippling, Brex, Ramp, Spendesk, and Airbase. Within the AI Workforce house, it faces competitors from Harvey, Fukushima famous.
Techcrunch occasion
San Francisco
|
October 27-29, 2025
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 workforce consists of “greater than 12 former CTOs and a Kaggle Grandmaster.” Bakuraku gives 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 Sequence B funding lower than two years after securing its Sequence A in November 2023. Its signature platform, the Bakuraku Suite, has seen important development, the seven-year-old firm stated.
“We handed 10,000 clients in February 2024 and reached 15,000 by April 2025, with extra enterprise shoppers approaching board,” the CEO stated. “Headcount has additionally grown from about 220 staff in October 2023 to round 430 as of the tip of July 2025.”
LayerX is on observe to achieve $68 million, equal to ¥10 billion, sooner than any SaaS firm in Japan’s historical past, in keeping with the corporate. “The expansion benchmark often called T2D3 was achieved forward of schedule, and we count on to surpass the earlier home report, which took eight years from product launch, in below 5 years,” Fukushima stated.
Ai Workforce counts Mitsui & Co. and MUFG Financial institution amongst its shoppers, whereas Bakuraku serves clients equivalent to Ippudo, IRIS Ohyama, the Imperial Resort, and Sekisui Chemical.
Wanting 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.
