Japanese startup LayerX has secured $100 million in Series B funding led by Technology Cross Ventures, marking the U.S. fund’s first investment in a Japanese company. The round also saw participation from MUFG Bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Innovation Partners, JAFCO Group, Keyrock Capital, Coreline Venture, and JP Investment. This brings the company’s total funding to $192.2 million.
The valuation was not disclosed, but the company said both the round size and valuation are among the largest ever raised at the Series B stage by a seven-year-old Japanese startup.
Founded in 2018 by entrepreneur Yoshinori Fukushima, who previously launched the listed news app Gunosy, LayerX was created to address inefficiencies in Japan’s enterprise workflows. The company shifted its focus to SaaS with Bakuraku, an AI platform for automating spending workflows such as expense management, invoice processing, and corporate card operations. Bakuraku now serves over 15,000 companies.
Other offerings include Alterna, a digital securities platform developed with Mitsui & Co., and Ai Workforce, a generative AI tool designed to streamline enterprise data and workflows.
Fukushima said the team identified a bottleneck in invoice processing, which led them to build Bakuraku. “We passed 10,000 customers in February 2024 and reached 15,000 by April 2025, with more enterprise clients coming on board,” he said.
LayerX employs over 430 people, up from 220 in late 2023, and is targeting $68 million in revenue faster than any SaaS company in Japan’s history. The company believes it will surpass the domestic growth record in less than five years compared to the previous benchmark of eight years.
The startup faces domestic competition from Money Forward Cloud Keihi, freee, and Rakuraku Seisan, and international rivals such as SAP Concur, Rippling, Brex, Ramp, Spendesk, and Airbase. It differentiates itself with features like AI-powered auto-entry, document splitting, and AI-enabled business process outsourcing.
Bakuraku’s clients include Ippudo, IRIS Ohyama, the Imperial Hotel, and Sekisui Chemical. Ai Workforce counts Mitsui & Co. and MUFG Bank among its customers.
Looking ahead, LayerX aims to reach about $680 million in annual recurring revenue by 2030, with half of that expected from AI agent services. It also plans to expand its team to 1,000 employees by 2028.
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