FILE PHOTO: AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters and robot hand are placed on computer motherboard in this illustration created on June 23, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
(Reuters) -Artificial intelligence (AI) startup DualEntry has raised $90 million in a Series A round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Khosla Ventures to take on established enterprise resource planning (ERP) software providers, the company said.
GV (Google Ventures) also participated in the round, valuing the New York-based company, launched a year ago, at $415 million. The deal underscores investor appetite for AI-driven enterprise software and for startups that have found early product-market fit.
DualEntry targetsa segment long dominated by Oracle's NetSuite, Sage and Acumatica. The company argues that many legacy systems rely on outdated technology, are costly to implement and often require months-long, expensive migrations that can lock in customers.
Its core product is an AI-native platform designed to automate financial workflows. The startup says it enables "NextDay Migration", which can transfer a company's historical financial data from an old system to DualEntry's platform within 24 hours, a process that can otherwise take months and incur significant consulting fees.
Rapid implementation is central to DualEntry's go-to-market strategy. The company is focusing on mid-market firms that have outgrown entry-level accounting software such as QuickBooks but are reluctant to undertake a large-scale migration to a traditional ERP.
CEO Santiago Nestares told Reuters his own experience of attempting an ERP migration at his previous company highlighted the burden of legacy systems. The "clunky" process, he said, inspired him to build a platform that could get businesses "live in 24 hours."
DualEntry said it has signed customers ranging from startups to a publicly listed company. It plans to use the new capital to expand its roughly 40-person team and speed up product development, as well as expand internationally.
Investors see AI as a key enabler in what they estimate is a $500 billion ERP market, which has largely remained unchanged since the sector shifted from on-premise to cloud-based software.
Many incumbents rely on networks of third-party implementation consultants paid by the hour. The push toward automation also comes amid a looming talent crunch in the accounting industry.
"It takes understanding of what this complex process of migration is and training AI technology to essentially act as the data consultants that would perform the migration to drastically accelerate the process," said Ravi Mhatre, partner at Lightspeed.
(Reporting by Krystal Hu in San Francisco; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
