Black Ore Raises $60 Million and Debuts AI Tool for Accountants

Artificial intelligence (AI) startup Black Ore emerged from stealth after raising $60 million.

The company, founded by FinTech entrepreneurs Eyal Shinar and Pavel Kapovski, rolled out its first product, Tax Autopilot, which uses AI to study tax law and simplify tax preparation for accountants, according to a Tuesday (Nov. 7) press release.

“When highly educated financial services professionals have to spend their time and resources on high-volume data entry and admin work, with little time left for strategic human thinking, industry innovation is sorely needed,” Shinar, who is also the firm’s CEO, said in the release. “For the last two years, we’ve been working with tax and accounting firms of all sizes to build an intelligent solution to arm accountants with the technology needed to alleviate resource constraints, scale services and create more value for clients. Cloud computing changed the way CPAs delivered services, and AI will have an even more profound impact on the entire industry and eventually the world.”

In an interview with Bloomberg, Shinar said the company’s new funding — from a round led by Andreessen Horowitz and Oak HC/FT — will be used to expand its customer base, hire employees with AI and machine learning expertise and develop new products.

“Engineers are expensive,” Shinar said, per the report. “The bottom line is if you build the right team, you don’t need to throw too much money on the problem.”

Black Ore is launching at a time when the rise of generative AI has given finance departments a powerful tool, as PYMNTS noted in September.

“I think all of us are seeing generative AI explode in various different forms and bring out very creative ways to perform tasks and activities while improving efficiencies,” Veena Gundavelli, the founder and CEO at Emagia, told PYMNTS.

Some of the most promising AI applications, she added, can be found inside finance operations and accounting workflows.

Elsewhere on the AI front, PYMNTS examined OpenAI’s announcement that it is opening a “low-to-no-code platform” for users to build their own custom AI-powered chatbots.

“What’s interesting about OpenAI’s announcement is that the AI firm is positioning its user-built GPTs as the AI equivalent of apps and creating a marketplace where people can buy and sell their GPTs to other users,” the report said.

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