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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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Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, has reacted to his exclusion from the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council for the 2027 general elections.
The former Rivers State governor said his priority is to deliver the state and the FCT for President Bola Tinubu rather than seek a position in the campaign structure.
Wike spoke while inspecting ongoing road projects in the Apo/Karish and Kubwa-Bwari areas of Abuja.
During the inspection, Wike explained why he had deliberately avoided serving as Director-General of presidential campaign organisations in previous elections.
According to the minister, holding the position of campaign Director-General does not necessarily translate into electoral success, particularly if the person is unable to deliver his or her home state to the presidential candidate.
Wike said his experience of Nigerian politics had shown that several politicians who occupied top campaign positions eventually lost the states where they exercised political influence.
He cited the 2015 presidential election, when former Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi served as Director-General of the campaign that produced Muhammadu Buhari as President but was unable to deliver Rivers State to the APC candidate.
The minister also recalled that Amaechi, who later became Minister of Transportation, again served as campaign Director-General in 2019 but failed to deliver Rivers State.
Wike further referred to former Senate President Bukola Saraki, who headed the presidential campaign of Atiku Abubakar in 2019 but lost Kwara State and his senatorial seat during the election.
He also cited former Sokoto State Governor Aminu Tambuwal, who served as Director-General of Atiku’s campaign in 2023 but lost Sokoto State, as well as former Plateau State Governor Simon Lalong, who served as Director-General of the APC presidential campaign but could not deliver Plateau State.
The FCT minister said the examples demonstrated the importance of concentrating on one’s political base instead of being carried away by campaign titles.
“What’s important is that you are able to deliver those two states. So it’s not about being DG. If you’re DG and you don’t win your state, what’s the essence of the DG?” Wike said.
“I don’t want to lose my state,” he added.
Wike maintained that politics was essentially local and that anyone aspiring to occupy a major political position must first prove his ability to win elections in his immediate political environment.
“If you cannot deliver the President in your state, how will you say you want an election? If you lose your own state, even if you’re DG, you’ll be ashamed,” he said.
The former Rivers State governor also made it clear that his support for Tinubu’s re-election in 2027 did not depend on his membership of the APC Presidential Campaign Council.
Wike is not a member of the APC but was one of the prominent opposition figures who supported Tinubu’s emergence in the 2023 presidential election despite belonging to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
He said he and his political allies did not need to become members of the APC before working for Tinubu in 2023 and would adopt a similar approach in the 2027 election.
According to him, the political arrangement would continue through the emerging “Rainbow Coalition”, which he said would bring together politicians and political groups from different parties in support of Tinubu.
Wike cited the example of Senator Saliu Mustapha, representing Kwara Central, who, according to him, could support Tinubu for the presidency while seeking re-election to the Senate under the PDP.
The minister argued that membership of the APC Presidential Campaign Council should therefore not be regarded as the only measure of support for Tinubu’s 2027 presidential bid.
He said he would continue to concentrate on Rivers State and the FCT, where he claimed to have significant political influence and responsibility.
“There’s nothing like the APC Campaign Director in Rivers State election. I’m the one that’s in charge. I’m also the one that’s in charge of FCT,” Wike said.
He stressed that the ultimate objective was to secure victory for Tinubu rather than pursue a title within the campaign council.
His comments came shortly after Tinubu constituted the APC Presidential Campaign Council for the 2027 general elections, appointing former Zamfara State Governor, Senator Abdulaziz Yari, as Director-General.
The council was announced in a statement issued on Saturday by Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy.
Under the structure, Tinubu will serve as Chairman of the campaign council, while Vice President Kashim Shettima and APC National Chairman, Professor Nentawe Yilwatda, will serve as Vice Chairmen.
Yari, a former governor of Zamfara State and a prominent APC figure, will coordinate the campaign as Director-General, while Imo State Governor Hope Uzodimma will serve as Secretary.
The APC National Secretary, Senator Ajibola Bashiru, was appointed Deputy Secretary, while Hadiza Bala-Usman will serve as Assistant Secretary.
The campaign council also includes several senior political figures as advisers to Tinubu, including former APC National Chairman Bisi Akande, former Ogun State Governor Segun Osoba, former Imo State Governor Rochas Okorocha, former APC National Chairman Abdullahi Adamu and Senator Florence Ita Giwa.
Senate President Godswill Akpabio, Speaker of the House of Representatives Tajudeen Abbas and Yobe State Governor Mai Mala Buni were appointed Deputy Directors-General for the southern and northern parts of the country.
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