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Rillet co-founder and CEO Nicolas Kopp seems justifiably confident as we talk over Zoom a day after his company announced a $100 million raise at a $1 billion valuation.<\/a> The U.S. has a shortage of accountants right now<\/a>, which is driving growth of his AI-native accounting platform so much, he raised that cash in 48 hours without even trying.<\/p>\n Rillet emerged from stealth two years ago. Since then, it has raised $200 million from top investors like Iconiq, Andreessen Horowitz, and Sequoia. It\u2019s also amassed 600 customers, most of whom are looking to ditch legacy accounting systems like Oracle and NetSuite, Kopp says.<\/p>\n A few weeks ago, Rillet held a board meeting and shared with investors its growth since its $70 million Series B last summer.\u00a0Annualized revenue rate had doubled in the last quarter alone; the startup added new clients, many of them public companies, and an alliance with EY to<\/a> introduce AI tools to the auditing giant.<\/p>\n His customers aren\u2019t piloting Rillet either, he said \u2014 they\u2019re yanking out ERP and accounting software from competitors like Intuit, NetSuite, or Oracle.<\/p>\n After that board meeting, text messages were fired, calls were made, and 48 hours later, Rillet was a unicorn. The company wasn\u2019t even looking to raise, Kopp said.<\/p>\n Seth Pierrepont, the general partner at Iconiq who led the round, said that the deal came together fast but \u201cit wasn\u2019t a cold start,\u201d he described. <\/p>\n \u201cRillet had already proven it could win against the incumbents that have owned this category for decades,\u201d Pierrepont told TechCrunch. Iconiq also co-led the company\u2019s Series B, and with this latest round, Pierrepont joins the Rillet board. \u201cA year of watching the team deliver on that made doubling down and leading the Series C an easy call.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Julien Bek, Sequoia\u2019s lead investor on the deal, also said that, though 48 hours might look rushed from the outside, from their perspective, re-investing in Rillet was a \u201cvery easy decision,\u201d after the company\u2019s growth in the past year.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cRillet\u2019s initial wedge is accounting, but ultimately they are reinventing the entire finance function,\u201d Bek told TechCrunch, adding that agentic finance could become \u201cone of the largest application software opportunities of the AI era.\u201d Sequoia led Rillet\u2019s Series A last summer.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the opportunity came together,\u201d Bek continued. \u201cWe already had all the context we needed.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Rillet is one of many AI-native startups now giving legacy players a run for relevance. Earlier this year, software stocks on the public market dipped as investors worried about how emerging AI tools would affect them. Kopp thinks there\u2019s some truth to that.<\/p>\n \u201cAI is going to come hard at these legacy players,\u201d he said, because it is giving customers compelling alternatives.<\/p>\n Rillet, for example, was built for AI agents, not humans, letting humans work alongside the AI agents on corporate bookkeeping. Rillet clients range from laundromats to a major sports franchise. Some 50% of Rillet customers come from Intuit, 30% from NetSuite and Sage Intacct, and 20% from Oracle, SAP, Workday, and Microsoft products, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Security is critical when working with sensitive client data, Kopp said. Rillet includes model routing, so customers can redirect requests to the foundational model of their choice (like OpenAI or Anthropic), and Rillet\u2019s harness prevents these models from training on their data, he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n There\u2019s also no cross-training \u2014 meaning one customer\u2019s data remains proprietary. The agents also have memory, so they can remember and store historical actions they can then use for their own process and improvement. <\/p>\n About three months ago, Rillet released a governance feature letting accountants see and audit every decision the AI agent has made \u2014 including what numbers the agents pull and how they calculated them. Creating this was harder than it looks, Kopp said, because the team had to compress agent data into a format humans could understand.<\/p>\n Kopp said this feature was only possible to build recently because AI agents have gotten so powerful so quickly. They can, for example, now support multi-step workflows over longer periods of time. Because of that, auditing what they are doing has become even more important for clients.<\/p>\n \u201cWe barely scratched the surface of potential and opportunity that this technology has,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Right now, regulations for public companies require that every transaction made by an AI agent be approved by another human. He thinks regulators and top names are watching how the accounting industry evolves around this new technology. He\u2019s hopeful that new rules and regulations will evolve that align more with where everything is headed. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a very normal process,\u201d he said. \u201cSimilar to when the cloud came, of just getting everybody familiar with what\u2019s going on and how it helps the profession.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Kopp also doesn\u2019t think mass job displacement from AI is coming anytime soon, especially in accounting. (Stanford released a report a few weeks ago<\/a> that found no widespread job displacement yet.) He insists that Rillet isn\u2019t a human replacement, not even for junior accountants. They can use Rillet to help automate and assist with some of the profession\u2019s grunt work.\u00a0<\/p>\n He also pointed out the expected shortage of accountants in the U.S.<\/a> The number of those graduating with an accounting <\/a>degree has been declining since at least 2010. In a recent report, the Controllers Council Organization found that 61% of finance leaders<\/a> have struggled to find finance, accounting, and CPA talent in the past year. The pullback is not entirely shocking: accountants\u2019 hours are long, the pipeline to the top is arduous, the pay often doesn\u2019t match the workload, and the work doesn\u2019t appeal to everyone.<\/p>\n At the same time,\u00a0the Bureau of Labor Statistics has projected that accounting-related needs<\/a> are expected to grow by at least 5%, adding 72,800 jobs by 2034. It also doesn\u2019t expect AI <\/a>to reduce the demand for accountants, even as the technology becomes more widespread. \u201cThe automation of routine tasks, such as data entry, will instead make accountants\u2019 advisory and analytical duties more prominent,\u201d the BLS said.<\/p>\n \u201cI just don\u2019t see people losing their job anytime soon,\u201d Kopp said.\u00a0\u201cThese people have started their professions to help businesses make better financial decisions,\u201d he added. \u201cWe can fully enable them to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n This piece was updated. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n