In today’s complex financial landscape, finance and accounting teams face mounting pressure to maintain accuracy while managing an ever-growing list of administrative and compliance tasks. Despite using multiple software tools, these highly skilled professionals are often buried in time-consuming manual processes instead of focusing on strategic initiatives. WiseLayer has developed AI-powered digital workers specifically designed for finance and accounting teams. Their specialized AI agents, including Angela for Accruals & Revenue Recognition and Dennis for Discrepancies & Financial Anomaly Detection, automate complex recurring processes with unprecedented precision. With automation rates reaching 90% and integration capabilities spanning over 300 tools including major ERPs, billing systems, and HRIS solutions, WiseLayer streamlines how finance teams operate, reducing month-end processes from days to hours while maintaining exceptional accuracy.
AlleyWatch sat down with WiseLayer CEO and Founder Josh Stein to learn more about the business, the company’s future plans, and recent funding round.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
WiseLayer secured $7.2M in a Seed round led by Canaan Partners, with participation from K5 Global, The Fintech Fund, Unpopular Ventures, and industry angels.
Tell us about the product or service that WiseLayer offers.
WiseLayer develops AI-powered digital workers specifically designed for finance and accounting teams. Their digital workforce includes specialized AI agents like Angela for Accruals & Revenue Recognition (hire her at accruals.ai), and Dennis for Discrepancies & Financial Anomaly Detection, along with four additional AI agents handling bank reconciliations, fixed asset depreciation & amortization, lease accounting, and prepaid expenses. The platform integrates with over 300 tools, including major ERPs, billing systems, P2P, and HRIS solutions.
What inspired the start of WiseLayer?
Both Vik and I have been members of finance teams. We know that these teams have some of the most brilliant people at any company, yet their brainpower is often spent on recurring administrative & compliance tasks like accruals, rev rec, and more. WiseLayer’s mission is to build AI agents to automate these repetitive, laborious processes with precision so that these highly-skilled people can focus on strategic financial initiatives that drive company growth.”
How is WiseLayer different?
Although there are many AI companies out there, none are taking a task-specific approach to automating admin & compliance tasks for finance and accounting teams. WiseLayer’s unique approach lies in creating specialized digital workers who each perform a specific time-consuming financial function with high accuracy and efficiency. For example, our AI agent Angela can reduce a month-end accrual process from days to about an hour, with current automation rates at 90% and projected to reach 98% this year.
What market does WiseLayer target and how big is it?
WiseLayer sells to mid-sized firms & public companies. More than 100 companies currently use WiseLayer’s AI workers, and this market is absolutely enormous, estimated to be $50B+
What’s your business model?
All agents are available to customers under a single fee, based on AI compute, which is less expensive than a traditional SaaS model. Our customers also enjoy unlimited seats for their company.
How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown?
Our AI workers allow corporate organizations to execute more within their accounting and finance teams with fewer required resources, naturally making us impactful in any economic cycle.
What was the funding process like?
Like all aspects of growing a company, it required preparation and perseverance to be successful. We’re thrilled and honored to have each exceptional investor on our cap table.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Raising capital is a full-time job in and of itself. Running a company while raising capital is a challenge, but thankfully our experienced team has achieved this in our prior experience, so we knew how to prioritize and execute.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
In our view, the two largest contributors were 1) that customers love our product and 2) that our team’s product vision aligned with our investors’ vision of where the world of accounting and AI was headed.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
To further delight both new and existing clients by making WiseLayer’s AI workers even more efficient – and to develop new AI workers, too.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Whether or not you have fresh capital, it’s crucially important to find product-market fit, and to make sure your customers love your product. Once you’ve achieved that, everything else falls into place.
Where do you see the company going now in the near term?
Continuing on our path of building AI agents to automate the time-consuming tasks for finance and accounting teams so that these highly skilled people can focus on strategic financial initiatives that drive company growth
What’s your favorite winter destination in and around the city?
Grinding in the office! Also, local pizza shops.
