Bluesheets, an AI-powered financial data startup based in Singapore, announced Tuesday it raised $6.5 million in a Series A funding round led by fintech-focused VC Illuminate Financial, bringing the four-year-old startup’s total funding to $12.5 million.
Participating in the round were returning investors Insignia Ventures Partners, Antler Elevate–the emerging growth fund of VC firm Antler–and 1982 Ventures. The Series A values the startup at $30 million.
“A lot of organizations are trying to implement [AI] applications, but are struggling quite a lot,” says Luca Zorzino, general partner and head of Asia at Illuminate Financial, in a video interview. “What we liked about Bluesheets is that not only have they implemented AI themselves, but they can actually form the foundational layer for more AI adoption in financial services.”
Founded in 2020, Bluesheets develops AI-powered data entry and management tools that aim to help companies process their financial data for accounting, reporting and other operations. The startup claims it can update records in real-time while integrating with other enterprise software tools from Google, Microsoft, Quickbooks, Stripe and SAP.
The fresh capital will go towards onboarding new staff and expanding internationally, as well as building new AI products, Bluesheets says. As part of its growth, the startup plans to target larger companies in sectors such as insurance and finance. To date, more than 200 small and medium, to large multinationals with operations across Asia, the U.S. and the U.K. use Bluesheets, including restaurant chain Pizza Express and insurance company MSIG.
“The opportunity with large language models is so vast that I don’t think people understand yet what this can lead to,” says Christian Schneider, CEO and cofounder of Bluesheets, in a video interview. “A lot of these automation projects that we’re implementing right now, they promise about 90% automation on a workflow that was previously very manual…I think it can be fully automated, close to 100%.”
There are “educational gaps” surrounding the abilities of large language models, as opposed to the buzzy field of generative AI and content creation, adds Schneider. What distinguishes Bluesheets is its “ability to put AI at the core of the company,” allowing for automation that clients can adapt to their needs, he says.
Still, Bluesheets faces off against industry giants that provide robotic process automation (RPA) products. To Schneider, these competitors include NYSE-listed UiPath, which has a market capitalization of $13.3 billion, and Salesforce Ventures-backed Automation Anywhere, which raised a $290 million Series B round at a $6.8 billion in 2019. Other legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems also offer add-on automation tools, but these are chiefly designed to “patch up” existing problems, he says.
Other emerging startups are also using AI to help companies digitize and automate their workflows. One example is Manila-headquartered Sprout Solutions, which made the Forbes Asia 100 to Watch list last year year. Founded in 2015, Sprout Solutions offers payroll automation and data-driven analytics for employers, and helps them distribute salary advances for employees. It secured a $10.7 million Series B funding round led by Cercano Ventures.
Amid a funding downturn, investor appetite for AI and its applications in enterprise technology remains strong. The value of private equity and VC-funding deals in AI companies fell to $4.11 billion in the third quarter of 2023, down from its peak at $13.50 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021, according to a report published last December by S&P Global Market Intelligence, which excluded outlier “mega-investments” by Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Even though factors such as complexities associated with AI model development and higher interest rates have restrained investors, the report authors wrote, the flow of funding round investment into AI companies was “consistent” in 2023, while “the underlying forces driving investment remain strong.”
