LayerX Raises $100M to Automate Japan’s Back Office

LayerX Raises $100M to Scale AI Back-Office Automation

Japan’s structural pressures — an aging population, persistent labor shortages and the 2023 move to mandatory e-invoicing — are forcing companies to rethink finance, tax, procurement and HR operations. But digital transformation remains hard: only about 16% of DX efforts succeed, dipping to single digits in traditional industries due to weak leadership, rigid culture and a shortage of digital talent.

LayerX, a seven-year-old Tokyo startup, just closed a $100 million Series B led by U.S. fund Technology Cross Ventures (TCV), marking TCV’s first bet in Japan. The round — part of a $192.2 million total raised — is among the largest for a Japanese Series B from a startup of LayerX’s age.

LayerX built traction by focusing on a high-friction workflow: paper-based invoice processing. Its flagship Bakuraku Suite automates expense management, invoice handling, corporate card operations, e-ledger compliance and related workflows. Bakuraku now serves more than 15,000 companies, including the Imperial Hotel and Ippudo.

The company also offers Ai Workforce, a generative AI solution to streamline workflows and surface enterprise data, plus Alterna, a digital securities platform built with Mitsui & Co. LayerX says its AI-native UX and automation like auto-entry and document splitting set Bakuraku apart from domestic rivals such as Money Forward Cloud Keihi and freee, and global players like SAP Concur and Ramp.

Growth has been rapid: customers rose from 10,000 in February 2024 to 15,000 by April 2025, headcount climbed from ~220 to ~430, and LayerX projects $68M ARR faster than any Japanese SaaS before it. The company targets ¥100 billion (~$680M) ARR by 2030 and plans to expand its headcount toward 1,000 employees.

Why this matters now: automating routine finance and HR tasks directly addresses Japan’s labor constraints and compliance needs from e-invoicing. It reduces error-prone manual entry, speeds month-end closes, and frees experienced staff for higher-value work — exactly the levers companies need as talent becomes scarcer.

Still, barriers remain. Successful automation requires executive commitment, retooled workflows, and internal change management. Integrations with legacy ERPs, data governance, and upskilling teams are common stumbling blocks even when technology is ready.

LayerX’s approach is instructive: combine AI-first UX, continuous feature upgrades, strategic partnerships with banks and trading houses, and a product that touches multiple back-office domains. That mix helps push adoption past pilot stages into enterprise-wide rollouts.

• Bakuraku: expense, invoice, corporate card, workflows, e-ledger
• Ai Workforce: generative AI agents and data-driven workflows
• Alterna: retail digital securities platform with Mitsui & Co.

For enterprises and public organizations evaluating automation, the key questions are familiar: where will automation deliver clear time and cost savings, how do you ensure compliance and data quality, and how do you manage the change across teams? The fastest wins often come from automating high-volume, rule-based tasks such as invoice OCR, expense reconciliation and corporate card matching.

LayerX’s Series B confirms there’s investor appetite for AI-first back-office platforms in Japan and signals a broader push to industrialize automation across Asia’s large, paper-heavy enterprises. The startup’s path — product-market fit on a painful workflow, strategic partnerships, and rapid product iteration — is a playbook others will study closely.

QuarkyByte can help organizations convert these lessons into action by modeling impact, designing pilot programs that align with compliance, and building the governance and skills strategy to sustain automation at scale.