Growing old 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 affords 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 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 dimensions 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 whole raised to $192.2 million.
The startup’s key choices embrace Bakuraku, a platform that automates company spending workflows, overlaying 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 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 one in all his digital transformation (DX) and blockchain tasks.
The founder launched LayerX after figuring out a big 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 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 area, it faces competitors from Harvey, Fukushima famous.
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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 affords a complete, built-in platform overlaying “expense administration, bill processing, company playing cards, workflows, e-ledger compliance, attendance, and receivables—multi functional answer,” Fukushima added.
CEO of Layerx (Yoshinori Fukushima) and CTO of layerx (Yuki Matsumoto)
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 vital progress, the seven-year-old firm mentioned.
“We handed 10,000 clients in February 2024 and reached 15,000 by April 2025, with extra enterprise purchasers approaching board,” the CEO mentioned. “Headcount has additionally grown from about 220 workers in October 2023 to round 430 as of the tip 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, based on 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 beneath 5 years,” Fukushima mentioned.
Ai Workforce counts Mitsui & Co. and MUFG Financial institution amongst its purchasers, whereas Bakuraku serves clients resembling Ippudo, IRIS Ohyama, the Imperial Lodge, 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 workers by 2028.
