Numeric Raises $28M to Revolutionize Accounting with AI-Powered Automation

AI accounting software startup Numeric raises $28M

The round was led by Menlo Ventures and comes just five months after the company raised $10 million in a seed funding round. New investors IVP and Socii Capital, plus existing backers such as Founders Fund, 8VC and Long Journey also participated in the round. The company has created an artificial intelligence-infused platform that's designed to address one of the most persistent challenges in accounting work, namely the error-prone and time-consuming process of organizing and reconciling financial data. According to Numeric, its software uses AI algorithms to automate business-critical month-end workflows, monitoring financial information in real-time and generating reports to explain fluctuations in the numbers. In an interview with TechCrunch, Numeric's co-founder and chief executive Parker Gilbert explained that Numeric can shave hours and even days off the time it takes to perform monthly book closings. The software works by aggregating and reconciling data from various accounting systems and Excel spreadsheets, before overlaying that information using an AI agent. The agent is tasked with looking at how each line item changed compared to the previous month. If it identifies an outlier or some other unexpected variation, it will create a report that explains the anomaly. In this way, it can save accountants from performing hours of manual work to document variance in a company's accounts. In addition, the company has created a generative AI accounting co-pilot, which can help accountants save time by responding to any questions they have about their accounts. Users simply type their question in natural language, and Numeric's AI technical accounting co-pilot will find the answers they seek. Numeric reckons its platform is seeing some impressive traction, with its annual recurring revenue growing by four-times in the last year. It has also bagged some high-profile clients along the way, including OpenAI, Plaid Inc. and Brex Inc., highlighting the demand for its platform. "We're enabling accounting teams to move beyond being scorekeepers in spreadsheets," Gilbert said. "Our goal is to empower them to provide strategic guidance that drives business forward." Numeric says AI is paving the way to a future in which accountants are no longer just preparers of data, but strategic reviewers, and believes this can transform the way businesses approach financial management and make decisions. The startup faces competition from other innovative accounting software companies such as Blackline Inc. and FloQast Inc., but it's AI-native approach sets it apart from those rivals, as does its ability to synthesize large volumes of data and deliver insights that can aid in decision making. Menlo Ventures Partner Croom Beatty said Numeric has vast potential to raise its game. "Its moat is a lot deeper than a lot of areas we were looking at," he said. "It marries complex workflow with complex data in a market that has not been well served by tech companies." Using the new funding, Numeric will look to expand its product offerings, and explore the opportunities in adjacent markets, such as financial planning and analysis.

Exclusive: Numeric grabs $28M Series A to automate accounting using AI

Accountants generally dread month-end and quarter-end closings. That's because finalizing financial records for a specific period is generally a manual, error-prone and time-consuming endeavor. In 2020, Parker Gilbert (pictured above; middle) was so fed up with the tedium of managing finance and accounting at an early-stage startup that he decided to co-found Numeric, an accounting software that automates certain parts of the book-closing process. And the introduction of genAI several years later significantly enhanced Numeric's capabilities, so much so that it's now used by the accounting departments of companies like Brex, OpenAI, Plaid and Wealthfront. Over the last year, Numeric's revenue has increased four-fold to the single-digit millions, and investors are suddenly flocking to back the company. Now, just five months after it raised a $10 million seed round from a slew of well-known investors, the company has raised a $28 million Series A led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from new investors IVP and Socii. Previous backers Founders Fund, Long Journey, 8VC, Friends & Family Capital, and Fifth Down also invested in this round. Numeric lets accounting teams shave days off their monthly book-closing process, Gilbert told TechCrunch. The company's product achieves this by aggregating and reconciling data from various accounting systems and Excel spreadsheets. It then overlays that data with an AI agent, which looks for how each line item changed from the previous month. If the agent spots outliers or unexpected variations, it explains why the account has increased or decreased, saving accountants a lot of time they would otherwise spend documenting variance in accounts -- a process known as flux analysis. Gilbert, the CEO of the startup, explained with an example: If the AI agent notices that Numeric's legal expenses were much higher in October than in September, it would write an explanation along the lines of, "Your legal expenses went up this month because you paid Wilson Sonsini $X amount more for your funding." The possibility of AI hallucinations in the flux analysis commentary is one of the first concerns to come to mind, but Gilbert stressed that's typically not a problem -- he said Numeric always provides links so accountants can check the AI agent's work at any time. While the actual tie-out and calculations are not done by generative AI at the moment, Gilbert expects Numeric's model to soon be capable of doing that accurately. "In terms of synthesizing large quantities of data, LLMs are incredibly good at this today, and I think are going to only increasingly get better," he added. Croom Beatty, a partner at Menlo Ventures, said he has spent a lot of time looking for a company that is disrupting accounting software, and Numeric was one of the first startups in the category to pique his interest. "Numeric's moat is a lot deeper than a lot of areas we were looking at," he said. "It marries complex workflow with complex data in a market that has not been well served by tech companies." Beatty expects the company will be able to add other products in the future, such as financial planning and analysis capabilities -- a market that Anaplan now dominates. Numeric competes with two accounting software companies: Publicly-traded Blackline, and FloQast, an 11-year-old startup that was valued at $1.6 billion when it raised its Series E this April. As for why there aren't other, new AI-powered entrants in the accounting software market, Beatty said what Numeric is doing is very complex and not easily replicable.

$28M Series A fuels Numeric's mission to build the next-gen financial data platform

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 10, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Numeric has raised a $28 million Series A round led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from new investors IVP and Socii Capital, and existing investors Founders Fund, 8VC, Long Journey, Access Industries, and Friends & Family Capital, and others. This investment will accelerate engineering hiring and product development, supporting Numeric's aim to enable real-time decision-making from financial data. In the past year, Numeric has experienced explosive growth, 4xing revenue and attracting high-profile customers including OpenAI, Brex, and Plaid. The new round comes on the heels of a $10M Seed Round announced just five months prior -- bringing the total amount raised to $38M. "We have looked at dozens of companies trying to help automate accounting workflows and have never seen the level of product love that world-class finance teams have for Numeric", said Croom Beatty, Partner at Menlo Ventures. Accounting teams have long been stuck between error-prone spreadsheets or disconnected point solutions, each addressing only a fraction of their needs. Numeric is pioneering a new approach. "By sitting at the nexus of the close process, Numeric is building the financial data fabric to unify point solutions and workflows into a single platform. It's clear that Numeric is quickly becoming the key pillar of the modern CFO stack", Beatty expands. "Today, most accounting teams spend 120 days per year on repetitive processes -- and companies are forced to make decisions based on weeks-old to months-old data", Parker Gilbert, CEO and Co-Founder of Numeric, explains. "Our team is building the first real-time accounting system. Where AI will review every single financial transaction; validate against standards and documentation; actively monitor for accuracy, and generate key review tasks for human accountants in the loop." This development comes at a critical time for the accounting industry, which faces a shortage of 340,000 professionals and a nearly 50% decline in CPA exam participants since 1990. Teams are short-staffed and overworked, creating a vicious cycle of accountants exiting the profession. Numeric's platform automates manual work involved in the month-end close, such as balance sheet reconciliations and auto-drafted variance explanations. "By leveraging GenAI, Numeric enables our team to close books faster, gain deeper insights, and boost productivity. Plaid is undergoing rapid growth, and we need partners that can respond to our needs at scale as we continue to grow. What truly sets Numeric apart is their 'move fast' mantra -- whenever we need something, their team responds immediately, often delivering a fix or new feature within days. It's a fantastic partnership, and we're excited to see how Numeric continues to drive innovation in the accounting space", shared current customer Sandy Yang, Head of Accounting at Plaid. Founded four years ago, Numeric draws upon co-founder Parker Gilbert's firsthand experience with the limitations of traditional accounting systems while scaling a finance team at a VC-backed startup. Their goal is to create a new genre of financial software that transforms financial operations from a retrospective process into a real-time strategic asset. About Numeric Numeric is an AI accounting automation platform, built to take manual work off accountants' plates so they can focus on what's impactful. Founded in 2020 by co-founders Anthony Alvernaz, Parker Gilbert, and Andrew Bihl, Numeric is headquartered in San Francisco and New York. For more information, visit Numeric View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/28m-series-a-fuels-numerics-mission-to-build-the-next-gen-financial-data-platform-302273249.html SOURCE Numeric Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs