AI Accounting Startup Basis Hits $1.15 Billion Valuation as Firms Deploy Autonomous Agents

AI-for-Accounting Startup Basis Hits $1.15 Billion Valuation

AI-for-accounting startup Basis has surged to unicorn status with a new funding round as advances in artificial intelligence rattle the financial services markets. Basis raised $100 million from investors at a $1.15 billion valuation, the company plans to announce Tuesday. Venture capital firm Accel led the round, joined by GV (formerly Google Ventures) and former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein, as well as existing backers including Khosla Ventures. Founded in 2023, Basis provides AI agent technology to accounting firms to help them complete tasks like preparing financial statements, filing tax returns and tracking expenses. Investors are taking seriously the idea that AI could upend financial services. Earlier this month, wealth management stocks sank after the startup Altruist Corp. released AI agents for tax planning. Days prior, shares of financial data providers fell when Anthropic dropped a new model that the company said could perform complex financial research. Basis isn't the only startup hoping to shake up the world of accounting. General Catalyst put $65 million behind Accrual, a startup making AI software for accounting, earlier this month. Accounting is one of the key industries targeted by AI-focused Thrive Holdings. And in January, French startup Pennylane raised €175 million ($204 million) in a funding round led by growth equity investor TCV. Demand for accountants is expected to increase over the next several years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, fewer students are becoming accountants, and more accountants are retiring or leaving the profession. Basis aims to supplement the shortage of accountants in the US and elevate the kinds of work that human accountants are able to do, said CEO Matt Harpe. If rote tax returns and financial statements are automated, accountants can focus on higher-level work, helping clients make key decisions on tax strategies and capital allocations. Co-founder Mitchell Troyanovsky said the startup's role is similar to that of AI coding startups like Cursor and Lovable. "Coding agents can write a lot of code now," he said. "That doesn't mean we're hiring fewer engineers -- we're actually hiring more engineers." Basis focuses on building so-called long-horizon agents, which can work on complex accounting tasks for hours or even days. The company works with OpenAI, using the AI giant's models to take on increasingly complicated workflows, Troyanovsky said. Basis said it recently built the first-ever AI agent that can autonomously complete a partnership tax return, a complicated filing that requires accountants to produce individualized tax documents for every partner in a business, track custom profit-sharing arrangements, and often file separately in multiple states. The startup has raised $138 million to date and said its platform is used by about 30% of the top 25 accounting firms and 20% of the top 150 firms. With the fresh funding, Basis plans to expand its customer base while going deeper on tax and audit capabilities. The startup is also aiming to grow its machine learning and engineering teams, Harpe said.

AI accounting startup Basis raises $100 million at $1.15 billion valuation

Feb 24 (Reuters) - AI accounting startup Basis has raised $100 million in a Series B round valuing the company at $1.15 billion, as investors pour money into agentic AI systems designed to operate autonomously on complex tasks. The round was led by venture capital firm Accel, with participation from GV, formerly known as Google Ventures, former Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein and existing investor Khosla Ventures. Basis runs an AI agent platform for accountants and says its systems learn client-specific needs and work independently across multi-step accounting tasks. The company said it now serves about seven of the top 25 accounting firms in the U.S. Venture funding for artificial intelligence-linked firms has climbed sharply in recent years, with AI startups capturing a growing share of global deal value as investors bet the technology will transform industries worldwide. Agentic AI, which can plan, decide and act autonomously rather than simply respond to a prompt, has become one of the most sought-after categories in venture capital as investors focus on professional services. "Agent-native operations are pushing startups toward higher output per employee, and in some cases smaller teams; the cost impact can be significant early on and could, at scale, mean more competitive market dynamics," Michael Ashley Schulman, partner and CIO at Running Point Capital Advisors told Reuters. Basis said its platform addresses a longstanding talent shortage in the accounting industry, which has struggled to attract and retain qualified professionals in recent years. Reporting by Pragyan Kalita in Bengaluru; Editing by Tasim Zahid Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

AI accounting startup Basis secures $100M at $1.15B valuation as firms adopt agent-based workflows - SiliconANGLE

AI accounting startup Basis secures $100M at $1.15B valuation as firms adopt agent-based workflows Artificial intelligence agent platform for accountants startup Basis today revealed that it had raised $100 million in new funding on a $1.15 billion valuation to accelerate development of its platform and to increase its headcount. Founded in 2023, Basis offers software that is designed to automate structured accounting workflows across tax, audit and advisory functions. The company's platform is built around agent-based architecture that executes multi-step financial processes using large language models combined with rules-based controls and domain-specific accounting logic. The agents are focused on targeting labor-intensive tasks such as document review, reconciliation and tax preparation, areas where firms face staffing constraints and increasing compliance complexity. Basis's agents ingest structured and unstructured data from client documents, accounting systems and enterprise resource planning platforms and then analyze financial records, extract relevant fields, perform calculations and apply validation rules within predefined compliance frameworks. Human users remain in the loop for review and approval, while the agents handle data gathering, drafting and workflow progression within integrated firm systems. "Our sole focus is to equip accountants with the highest-performing, most accurate AI for accounting and to empower firms to drive new growth, provide higher-value service and improve accountant quality of life across every one of their practices," explains Matt Harpe, chief executive officer and co-founder of Basis. Key features of the Basis platform include the automated preparation of tax returns, audit testing procedures, workpaper generation and reconciliation tasks. The platform supports document classification, data extraction, variance analysis and cross-referencing across financial statements and maintains audit trails and structured outputs that align with firm documentation standards. Basis counts among its customers approximately 30% of the Top 25 accounting firms that are deploying agents that complete complex accounting workflows end-to-end across their client accounting services, tax and audit practices. Notable customers include Boulay PLLP, Clark Nuber PS, MarksNelson LLC, Pinion LLC and UHY LLC. The Series B funding round was led by Accel Partners LP, GV Management Company (Google Ventures) and Lloyd Blankfein, with Khosla Ventures, NFDG Ventures, Better Tomorrow Ventures, Box Group, Avid Ventures and a number of individual investors also participating. Notable among the individual investors are Adam D'Angelo, the CEO of Quora Inc., Amjad Masad, the CEO of Replit Inc. and Clem Delangue, the CEO of Hugging Face Inc. "What stands out about Basis is how deeply they think about architecting and deploying real agents that do real work in the real economy," said Miles Clements, partner at Accel. "Across multiple investments at the frontier of AI, we've seen the same pattern again and again: teams that get the fundamentals right tend to pull away quickly. Basis is years ahead in accounting AI and we believe it has what it takes to define this category as it matures."

Basis Raises $100 Million to Build Up AI in Accounting | PYMNTS.com

By completing this form, you agree to receive marketing communications from PYMNTS and to the sharing of your information with our sponsor, if applicable, in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions. The company's Series B round, announced Tuesday (Feb. 24), was led by Accel and Google Ventures and values Basis at $1.15 billion. "Accounting is structured, high-stakes, and essential to every business on earth. It's also one of the most underbuilt areas in technology," Founders Matthew Harpe and Mitchell Troyanovsky wrote on the company's blog. Three years after its founding, Basis "can now complete a partnership tax workbook end to end," the blog post added. The rise of AI agents, Basis said on its website, introduces new complexities that will require accounting to evolve to avoid hindering AI progress. "In this new reality, the world will not need less accounting. It will need dramatically more, at a quality and scale the profession has never had to deliver," the company said. "Basis exists for this exact reason." The company said its AI agents run autonomously, in some cases for hours, working with accountants on critical decisions and offering finished work for review. PYMNTS examined the role AI plays in accounting in a report late last year, pointing to recent research from Stanford, which found that generative AI systems help accountants work more efficiently by automating repetitive bookkeeping and flagging issues in real time, freeing up human staff to support more clients and complete financial reports more quickly. "Accountants using these tools can close the books more quickly and provide higher-quality service than those who rely solely on manual processes," that report said. "Accountants themselves report improvements in job manageability and efficiency as AI handles the grunt work." PYMNTS also spoke last year with Lisa Huang, senior vice president of product management at Xero, who said many accounting systems remain manual even as the industry faces mounting external pressures. "The accounting and bookkeeping industry is at a turning point," she told PYMNTS. "Many professionals are overworked and under-resourced, facing increasing client demand and rising pressure from evolving regulatory and compliance requirements." "At the same time, the profession is undergoing a generational shift, with more practitioners exiting the workforce than entering it, creating a looming talent shortage," Huang added. "Despite all this, the systems many accountants rely on remain heavily manual, reducing their capacity to offer high-value advisory services and strategic guidance to clients."