A quiet revolution is taking place in the Japanese corporate world. While most companies are still struggling with paper invoices and Excel spreadsheets, a startup named LayerX has quietly risen, using artificial intelligence to directly address pain points in traditional back-office operations.
This Japanese AI SaaS unicorn company, which was founded just seven years ago, has recently completed a notable Series B funding round, securing $100 million. More importantly, this round was led by the American tech giant TCV, marking the first time that this fund has invested in a Japanese startup, highlighting LayerX's extraordinary potential.
LayerX's success is not accidental. Japan is facing multiple challenges such as an aging population, labor shortages, the rise of generative AI technology, and the implementation of the electronic invoicing system in 2023. These factors have created a perfect storm, pushing companies to accelerate the automation of back-office operations such as finance, tax, procurement, and human resources. However, the harsh reality is that only 16% of digital transformation projects succeed, and in traditional industries, this rate drops to as low as 4-11%. Insufficient leadership commitment, rigid corporate culture, and a lack of digital talent remain major obstacles to transformation.
It is in this context that LayerX has emerged as a standout, offering comprehensive solutions for back-office automation through its AI SaaS platform. Although the company has not disclosed specific valuation details, it stated that both the valuation and the size of the funding round set a historical record for Japanese startups in their seventh year. In addition to TCV, well-known investment institutions such as Mitsubishi UFJ Bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Innovation Partners, JAFCO Group, Keyrock Capital, Coreline Venture, and JP Investment have also joined this round, bringing the company's total funding to $192.2 million.
LayerX's core arsenal includes three key tools. The first is the Bakuraku platform, an intelligent engine for automating enterprise expense workflows, covering functions such as expense management, invoice processing, and corporate card operations, currently serving over 15,000 enterprises. The second is Alterna, a digital retail investment platform developed in collaboration with Mitsui & Co. The third is its generative AI solution, Ai Workforce, designed specifically for optimizing enterprise workflows and data utilization.
The founder of LayerX, Yoshide Fukushima, is a serial entrepreneur who studied machine learning at the University of Tokyo. Previously, he successfully launched the news app Gunosy, which went public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. In 2018, he keenly identified a major bottleneck in Japanese enterprise workflows—paper invoice processing—which prompted the team to decisively shift to the SaaS sector and launch the AI-driven Bakuraku platform.
In an interview with TechCrunch, Fukushima stated that despite the surge of digitalization, many Japanese companies still heavily rely on paper documents and Excel spreadsheets for expense reimbursement and invoice processing. In the domestic market, LayerX mainly competes with companies such as Money Forward Cloud Keihi, freee, and Rakuraku Seisan. On the global stage, it faces strong competition from companies like SAP Concur, Rippling, Brex, Ramp, Spendesk, and Airbase. In the AI Workforce space, competitors like Harvey should also not be underestimated.
The killer feature of the Bakuraku platform lies in its AI-driven user experience. The company continuously upgrades automated data entry and document segmentation features while heavily investing in AI agents and AI-enabled business process outsourcing services. Its technical team is impressive, comprising over 12 former CTOs and one Kaggle Grandmaster. Bakuraku offers a fully integrated solution covering all aspects, including expense management, invoice processing, corporate cards, workflows, e-book compliance, attendance, and accounts receivable.
This seven-year-old company has shown astonishing growth. Within less than two years after completing its Series A funding in November 2023, it successfully completed its Series B funding. The growth trajectory of its flagship product, the Bakuraku Suite, is particularly impressive. Fukushima revealed that the company surpassed the 10,000 customer mark in February 2024, reaching 15,000 customers by April 2025, with the proportion of enterprise customers continuing to increase. The number of employees has also grown from approximately 220 in October 2023 to around 430 by July 2025.
LayerX is accelerating toward its goal of achieving $68 million in annual revenue, equivalent to 10 billion yen, which could make it the fastest SaaS company in Japanese history to reach this milestone. Fukushima confidently stated that the company has already exceeded the industry benchmark known as the T2D3 indicator, and it is expected to break the previous domestic record of eight years within less than five years.
In terms of its client list, Ai Workforce has already won the favor of heavyweight clients such as Mitsui & Co. and Mitsubishi UFJ Bank, while Bakuraku serves well-known enterprises such as Ichiran Ramen, Alice Oyama, Imperial Hotel, and Sekisui Chemical.
Looking ahead, LayerX's ambitions are clear. The company has set a grand goal of achieving approximately $680 million in annual recurring revenue by the 2030 fiscal year, with an estimated half of the revenue coming from AI agent business. At the same time, the company plans to expand its workforce to about 1,000 people by 2028, preparing sufficient human capital for this back-office operational revolution.
In the tide of digital transformation, LayerX is moving forward at an unprecedented speed, using AI as a sail to reshape the landscape of corporate back-office operations in Japan and around the world.
