LayerX Raises $101M to Provide Back-Office Automation in Japan

Japanese startup LayerX reportedly raised 15 billion yen (about $101 million) in a Series B funding round for its artificial intelligence software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that provides back-office automation for enterprises.

“We will strengthen our recruitment of engineers and further accelerate our AI agent business,” the company said in a Monday (Sept. 1) post on social platform X, translated by Grok.

TechCrunch reported Monday that LayerX offers a platform called Bakuraku that automates expense management, invoice processing and corporate card operations; a retail digital securities investment platform called Alterna; and a generative AI solution called Ai Workforce that streamlines workflows and harnesses enterprise data.

LayerX’s offerings provide solutions for companies in Japan that need to automate finance, tax, procurement and human resources (HR) but have run into barriers when trying to do so, according to the report.

CEO Yoshinori Fukushima told TechCrunch, per the report: “We passed 10,000 customers in February 2024 and reached 15,000 by April 2025, with more enterprise clients coming on board.”

In another, separate development in Japan, OpenAI and the SoftBank Group said in February that they agreed to establish a joint venture company to market enterprise AI solutions to major companies in Japan.

The companies said the joint venture, SB OpenAI Japan, would market enterprise AI called “Cristal intelligence,” which they would jointly develop and market. In addition, they said SoftBank would spend $3 billion annually to integrate Cristal intelligence and existing tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise across its group companies.

“This initiative will not only transform the way SoftBank Group operates but also revolutionize the way companies work in Japan and around the globe,” SoftBank Group Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son said at the time in a press release.

In September 2024, Tokyo-based AI firm Sakana AI raised over $100 million in a Series A funding round and formed a collaboration with Nvidia , aiming to build “a world-class AI lab ” in Japan.

“With the resources gathered from our Series A, we aim to continue to invest in talent and build one of the highest talent-dense AI companies,” Sakana AI said at the time in a blog post. “We will also continue to invest heavily in developing our infrastructure, which will be critical in our mission to advancing nature-inspired, sustainable and energy-efficient AI technologies.”

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