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How AI accounting startup Rillet raised $100M and became a unicorn in 48-hours
Rillet co-founder and CEO Nicholas Koop seems justifiably confident as we talk over Zoom a day after his company announced a $100 million raise at a $1 billion valuation. The US has has a shortage of accountants right now, which is driving growth of his AI-native accounting platform so much, he raised that cash in 48 hours without even trying.
Rillet emerged from stealth two years ago. Since then, it has raised $200 million from top investors like ICONIQ, Andreessen Horowitz, and Sequoia. It’s also amassed 600 customers, most of whom are looking to ditch legacy accounting systems like Oracle and NetSuite, Koop says.
A few weeks ago, Rillet held a board meeting and shared with investors its growth since its $70 million Series B last summer. Annualized 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 introduce AI tools to the auditing giant.
His customers aren’t piloting Rillet either, he said — they’re yanking out ERP and accounting software from competitors like Intuit, NetSuite, or Oracle.
After that board meeting, text messages were fired, calls were made, and 48 hours later, Rillet was a unicorn. The company wasn’t even looking to raise, Koop said.
Seth Pierrepont, the general partner at Iconiq who led the round, said that the deal came together fast but “it wasn’t a cold start,” he described.
“Rillet had already proven it could win against the incumbents that have owned this category for decades,” Pierrepont told TechCrunch. Iconiq also invested in the company’s Series B, and with this latest round, Pierrepont joins the Rillet board. “A year of watching the team deliver on that made doubling down and leading the Series C an easy call.”
Julien Bek, Sequoia’s 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 “very easy decision,” after the company’s growth in the past year.
“Rillet’s initial wedge is accounting, but ultimately they are reinventing the entire finance function,” Bek told TechCrunch, adding that agentic finance could become “one of the largest application software opportunities of the AI era.” Sequoia led Rillet’s Series A last summer.
“When the opportunity came together,” Bek continued. “We already had all the context we needed.”
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. Koop thinks there’s some truth to that.
“AI is going to come hard at these legacy players,” he said because it is giving customers compelling alternatives.
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 the NFL Hall of Fame. 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.
Security is critical when working with sensitive client data, Koop said. Rillet includes model routing, so customers can redirect requests to the foundational model of their choice (like OpenAI or Anthropic), and Rillet’s harness prevents these models from training on their data, he says.
There’s also no cross-training — meaning one customer’s 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.
About three months ago, Rillet released a governance feature letting accountants see and audit every decision the AI agent has made — including what numbers the agents pull and how they calculated them. Creating this was harder than it looks, Koop said, because the team had to compress agent data into a format humans could understand.
Koop 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.
“We barely scratched the surface of potential and opportunity that this technology has,” he said.
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’s hopeful that new rules and regulations will evolve that align more with where everything is headed.
“It’s a very normal process,” he said. “Similar to when the cloud came, of just getting everybody familiar with what’s going on and how it helps the profession.”
Koop also doesn’t think mass job displacement from AI is coming anytime soon, especially in accounting. (Stanford released a report a few weeks ago that found no widespread job displacement yet.) He insists that Rillet isn’t a human replacement, not even for junior accountants. They can use Rillet to help automate and assist with some of the profession’s grunt work.
He also pointed out the expected shortage of accountants in the U.S. The number of those graduating with an accounting degree has been declining since at least 2010. In a recent report, the Controllers Council Organization found that 61% of finance leaders have struggled to find finance, accounting, and CPA talent in the past year. The pullback is not entirely shocking: accountants’ hours are long, the pipeline to the top is arduous, the pay often doesn’t match the workload and the work doesn’t appeal to everyone.
At the same time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has projected that accounting-related needs are expected to grow by at least 5%, adding 72,800 jobs by 2034. It also doesn’t expect AI to reduce the demand for accountants, even as the technology becomes more widespread. “The automation of routine tasks, such as data entry, will instead make accountants’ advisory and analytical duties more prominent,” the BLS said.
“I just don’t see people losing their job anytime soon,” Koop said. “These people have started their professions to help businesses make better financial decisions,” he added. “We can fully enable them to do that.”
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EuroMatch NPFL: “I’m Going Back Home To Put Everything Right” — Uzoho Refuses To Panic After Six-Goal Bendel Battle
Kun Khalifat FC head coach Obinna Uzoho is refusing to allow one difficult afternoon in Benin to define his team’s 2026/27 EuroMatch Nigeria Premier Football League campaign.
After watching Kun Khalifat suffer a 4-2 defeat to Bendel Insurance on Matchday Three, Uzoho’s message was not one of surrender or panic.
It was about work.
It was about improvement.
And, perhaps most importantly, it was about remembering just how much football remains to be played.
> “I’m going back home to make sure we put everything right. You know, this season has just gotten started.”
Those words capture the mentality of a coach who understands that the EuroMatch NPFL is a marathon and that one difficult result in September cannot be allowed to determine what happens over an entire campaign.
Uzoho also revealed the personal motivation driving him this season.
“I want to do more this season because last season was tough for me.”
Put the two statements together and the message becomes clear:
Last season provided the lessons. This season is his opportunity to respond.
From two clean sheets to six-goal reality check
Kun Khalifat travelled to the Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium with one of the most intriguing defensive records in the league.
They had played twice.
They had conceded zero goals.
Their opening encounter against Abia Warriors finished 0-0 before another goalless draw against Barau FC on Matchday Two.
Then Bendel Insurance changed everything.
The Benin Arsenal put four past Kun Khalifat in a dramatic 4-2 victory, ending the visitors’ perfect defensive record and handing them their first defeat of the campaign.
But hidden inside the disappointment was another first.
Kun Khalifat finally scored. Twice.
So Uzoho now returns home with something very specific to solve.
How does he recover the defensive discipline that produced consecutive clean sheets while retaining the attacking threat that finally appeared in Benin?
That could become one of the interesting tactical stories of their next few matches.
“This season has just gotten started”
Perhaps the most significant part of Uzoho’s reaction was his refusal to treat Matchday Three like a crisis.
Three games represent only a tiny fraction of an EuroMatch NPFL season.
There will be victories.
There will be defeats.
There will be afternoons when everything a coach planned works perfectly — and others when four goals disappear into his net.
What matters is what happens afterwards.
Uzoho’s response suggests he already understands his next assignment.
Go home. Identify what went wrong. Put it right. Go again.
That is football management stripped down to its essentials.
And his reference to last season adds a personal dimension.
Uzoho isn’t merely attempting to improve Kun Khalifat.
He wants to improve himself.
That makes his journey another one worth following as this EuroMatch NPFL campaign develops.
The league’s entertainment does not belong exclusively to the goalscorers.
Behind every result is a coach making decisions, dealing with pressure, protecting players, accepting criticism and trying to find an answer before the next whistle.
For Uzoho, the answer to a 4-2 defeat will not be found in Benin anymore.
It will be found back on the training ground.
And after only three Matchdays, he knows there is plenty of road remaining.
“I’m going back home to make sure we put everything right.”
That is the promise.
“This season has just gotten started.”
That is the warning.
For Kun Khalifat, the next chapter of their EuroMatch NPFL story begins with how Obinna Uzoho and his players respond.
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