Japanese AI SaaS startup LayerX has secured $100 million in Series B funding, led by Technology Cross Ventures (TCV) in its first-ever investment in Japan. The raise, among the largest Series B rounds for a seven-year-old Japanese company, brings LayerX’s total funding to $192.2 million. Other backers include MUFG Bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Innovation Partners, JAFCO Group, Keyrock Capital, Coreline Venture, and JP Investment.
Founded in 2018 by serial entrepreneur Yoshinori Fukushima, LayerX helps enterprises automate finance, tax, procurement, and HR functions — a pressing need in Japan given aging demographics, labor shortages, and the adoption of e-invoicing. “We passed 10,000 customers in February 2024 and reached 15,000 by April 2025, with more enterprise clients coming on board,” said Fukushima, adding that headcount has nearly doubled to 430 employees since late 2023.
LayerX’s flagship product, Bakuraku, offers an AI-native platform for corporate spending management — including expense tracking, invoice processing, corporate cards, e-ledger compliance, and receivables — used by more than 15,000 companies. The company continuously upgrades its automation features with tools like “auto-entry and document splitting” and is also investing heavily in AI agents and AI-enabled business process outsourcing (BPO). Its clients include well-known brands such as Ippudo, IRIS Ohyama, the Imperial Hotel, and Sekisui Chemical.
Beyond Bakuraku, LayerX operates Alterna, a retail digital securities platform developed with Mitsui & Co., and Ai Workforce, a generative AI solution for enterprise workflow automation. Ai Workforce already counts MUFG Bank and Mitsui & Co. among its users.
Despite the rapid digital transformation wave, many Japanese businesses still depend on paper and Excel for back-office tasks. Fukushima explained that LayerX was born out of a “significant bottleneck” in invoice processing, prompting the pivot from a blockchain project to SaaS.
LayerX is on track to achieve ¥10 billion ($68 million) in annual recurring revenue faster than any SaaS company in Japan’s history. “The growth benchmark known as T2D3 was achieved ahead of schedule, and we expect to surpass the previous domestic record, which took eight years from product launch, in under five years,” Fukushima said. The company aims to hit ¥100 billion ($680 million) in ARR by 2030, with half projected from its AI agent business, and expand its workforce to 1,000 by 2028.
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