Ramp Courts $150 Billion Accounting Sector With New AI System

Financial operations platform Ramp has launched an artificial intelligence (AI) system designed for accounting firms.

Ramp Stack marks the company’s entry into the $150 billion accounting sector at a time when more than 300,000 CPAs have the industry and accounting degrees are at a 20-year low, Ramp said in its announcement Wednesday (June 3).

“Accounting firms are under more pressure today than at any point in history,” said Geoff Charles, Ramp’s chief product officer.

“The firms we work with aren’t asking for another AI tool to prompt. They need something that actually does the work, with every decision reviewable and auditable. That’s what Stack is built to do, starting with the close, and expanding into every workflow that stands between their team and higher-value client work.”

With Stack, accounting firms can teach the system their processes. From them, Stack “captures them as SOPs” that evolve as clients grow and workflows change.

“That institutional knowledge becomes the firm’s IP and is always up to date,” the company added, noting that Stack outperformed general purpose models in more than 200 accounting tasks, built and graded by working accountants.

“Stack today automates the work of the monthly close. What we’re building toward is broader,” Charles said. “An AI operating system where accounting firms can run any workflow – tax, audit, advisory – connected to every system and data source they rely on.”

The launch of Stack follows Ramp’s recent updates to its procurement platform to include a fleet of AI agents designed to triage employee requests, source vendors, look over contract terms and manage compliance checks.

Running on anonymized pricing benchmarks and vendor data from millions of Ramp transactions, this platform can provide smaller companies with the type of benchmark data that might be used by Fortune 500 companies, Ramp said at the time.

The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, last month reported that Ramp was looking to raise $750 million at a valuation of more than $40 billion. The $40 billion valuation would be up from the $32 billion valuation Ramp achieved in a November primary financing round and employee tender offer in which the company took in $300 million.

Ramp declined to comment on the report when reached by PYMNTS.