Stampli – a leader in AI-powered accounts payable automation – recently announced that it has raised $61 million in a Series D venture funding round led by funds managed by Blackstone, with the participation of existing investors Insight Partners, SignalFire, Bloomberg Beta, and NextWorld Capital. This funding round takes the total amount raised by the company to over $148 million.
Accounts Payable automation and B2B payments represent a largely unpenetrated market. And every business has to pay bills, which means every business has an accounts payable function.
Launched in 2015, Stampli is now one of the fastest-growing providers of accounts payable automation and ePayment services. And in August alone, Stampli processed over 1 million invoices totaling a collective value of more than $5 billion.
Stampli’s 1,300 accounts payable automation customers utilize its AI with invoice capture, expense allocation, approval routing, fraud detection, and more. And these activities are the final checkpoint before money is released, which means there’s zero tolerance for errors or hallucinations.
This safe/effective use of AI is significant since today’s CFOs feel immense pressure to embrace AI for faster workflows, lower costs, and fewer mistakes. However, AI is infamous for issues with data security and unpredictable outcomes.
Stampli’s success shows that AI can succeed even in finance. And Stampli also provides a blueprint for CFOs to maintain human validation of critical data and ensure rank-and-file team members accept AI as a partner.
The efficiency and cost benefits of accounts payable automation are widely known. For CFOs, the overriding concern in choosing a provider is minimizing the disruption of implementation to existing processes and the ERP systems, and ensuring the fastest time to value.
Stampli’s solutions were designed specifically to eliminate implementation risk. And Stampli builds its ERP integrations in-house to support the full range of native functionality, enabling customers to implement without reworking their ERP, changing their existing processes, or engaging expensive consultants. Plus, it reduces deployment time to days instead of months. Stampli’s adaptability makes it especially well-suited for complex multi-entity corporate structures, highly regulated industries like healthcare, and businesses that have already automated their AP but are disappointed with their current provider.
Stampli offers fast implementation for over 70 ERPs, including systems from Sage, Oracle, Microsoft, QuickBooks, SAP, Acumatica, IBM, and many others. And Beyond Accounts Payable, Stampli offers an integrated suite of FinTech products, including Stampli Credit Card and Stampli Direct Pay.
This investment in Stampli showcases Blackstone’s thematic focus on investing in businesses driving the digitization of the economy and those enabling and benefitting from AI adoption. In Stampli, Blackstone views a company that is well positioned at the intersection of these trends.
KEY QUOTES:
“Before we brought on Stampli, our AP team was nervous that the AI would be a threat rather than an asset to their jobs. But with Billy the Bot now performing such time-consuming manual tasks as coding invoices to the correct general ledger accounts, the AP team has seen their responsibilities shift to projects that add much greater value to the business. Today, we think of Billy as a team member, not an AI. Honestly, we love Billy the Bot and frequently refer to it by name.”
“Stampli has reduced our invoice processing time by 75%, which has a strategic impact on cash flow management. With a more accurate picture of our operating costs, Wenspok leadership can schedule major operational projects with confidence in budgeting and timing of cash flow requirements. At the tactical level, Stampli has created efficiencies across the board — not just on the AP team, but for all our operating team members outside of finance that we consult to validate the bills we receive. The average invoice approval time has dropped from 16 days to 2 days, and we think we will bring that number down even further.”
- Amanda Brown, Controller of Wenspok Companies, a $150M+ Wendy’s franchisee that operates 67 restaurant locations in 10 states
“In this macroeconomic environment, where companies have to be more careful with their spend and their cash, Stampli became the solution of choice due to our superb user experience, super-fast implementation and deep ERP integration capabilities. We chose Blackstone as our partner because of our shared vision and experience driving operational efficiencies through best practices, technology and AI. I am honored that they see a similar fit in our company. Together, we will make Stampli one of the largest FinTech companies in the world.”
- Eyal Feldman, CEO and Co-founder of Stampli
“In today’s environment, building a digital-first modern finance organization is a top priority for CFOs and controllers. While we are still in the early innings of AP automation, Stampli stands out as a transformative leader in this extremely large, underpenetrated market. Stampli’s best-in-class team has built a product loved by customers and differentiated by its ease-of-use and out of the box integration. We are thrilled to have Stampli join our growing portfolio of innovative companies.”
- Yifat Oron, Senior Managing Director at Blackstone and head of the firm’s office in Israel
“Stampli continues to provide a differentiated accounts payable automation platform by building deep ERP integrations and best-in-market AI/ML features that bring enterprise-grade functionality to the midmarket. We’re excited to continue our partnership with Stampli as they expand and grow.”
- Praveen Akkiraju, Managing Director at Insight Partners
