LayerX Uses AI To Cut Enterprise Back-Office Workload, Scores $100M In Series B
This Japanese AI startup just raised $100M to cut businesses’ admin burden.
Aging demographics, labor shortages, the adoption of GenAI, and the 2023 implementation of e-invoicing are driving companies to automate finance, tax, procurement, and HR in Japan. Yet only 16% of digital transformations succeed, and that’s only 4–11% in traditional industries. The main barriers? Weak leadership commitment, a rigid culture, and a lack of digital talent. LayerX offers an AI SaaS platform to help enterprises scale back-office automation.
LayerX, a Japanese AI SaaS startup that enables businesses to cut back-office workload, has raised $100 million in a Series B round led by Technology Cross Ventures (TCV), marking the U.S. fund’s first investment in a Japanese startup.
The company declined to disclose its valuation, but said both the valuation and the size of the round are among the largest ever raised by a seven-year-old Japanese startup at the Series B stage. Other investors, including MUFG Bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Innovation Partners, JAFCO Group, Keyrock Capital, Coreline Venture, and JP Investment, also joined the Series B round, bringing the total raised to $192.2 million.
The startup’s key offerings include Bakuraku, a platform that automates corporate spending workflows, covering expense management, invoice processing, and corporate card operations — for more than 15,000 companies; Alterna, a retail digital securities investment platform developed in partnership with Mitsui & Co.; and Ai Workforce, a generative AI solution designed to streamline workflows and harness enterprise data.
More on LayerX fundraising and AI efforts on TechCrunch
7 AI Terms You Need to Know: Agents, RAG, ASI And More | Martin Keen, IBM
AI is everywhere—and evolving fast! IBM Fellow, Martin Keen explains 7 essential AI terms, including Explainable AI, AI Agents, RAG, and ASI, while exploring tools like reasoning models, vector databases, and MCP. Discover how these innovations are shaping smarter, scalable AI systems for the future.
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Latam-GPT: Meet The Open Source Artificial Intelligence Of Latin America
WIRED spoke with the director of the Chilean National Center for Artificial Intelligence about a large-language model aimed at helping Latin America achieve technological independence.
LATAM-GPT IS NEW large language model being developed in and for Latin America. The project, led by the nonprofit Chilean National Center for Artificial Intelligence (CENIA), aims to help the region achieve technological independence by developing an open source AI model trained on Latin American languages and contexts.
“This work cannot be undertaken by just one group or one country in Latin America: It is a challenge that requires everyone’s participation,” says Álvaro Soto, director of CENIA, in an interview with WIRED en Español. “Latam-GPT is a project that seeks to create an open, free, and, above all, collaborative AI model. We’ve been working for two years with a very bottom-up process, bringing together citizens from different countries who want to collaborate. Recently, it has also seen some more top-down initiatives, with governments taking an interest and beginning to participate in the project.”
The project stands out for its collaborative spirit. “We’re not looking to compete with OpenAI, DeepSeek, or Google. We want a model specific to Latin America and the Caribbean, aware of the cultural requirements and challenges that this entails, such as understanding different dialects, the region’s history, and unique cultural aspects,” explains Soto.
Thanks to 33 strategic partnerships with institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean, the project has gathered a corpus of data exceeding eight terabytes of text, the equivalent of millions of books. This information base has enabled the development of a language model with 50 billion parameters, a scale that makes it comparable to GPT-3.5 and gives it a medium to high capacity to perform complex tasks such as reasoning, translation, and associations.
More in CENIA’s Latam-GTP large language model on WIRED
Cohere Founder, Nick Frosst: How To Compete With OpenAI And Anthropic, And Sam Altman’s AI Disservice | 20VC
Nick Frosst is a Canadian AI researcher and entrepreneur, best known as co-founder of Cohere, the enterprise-focused LLM. Cohere has raised over $900 million, most recently a $500 million round, bringing its valuation to $6.8 billion. Under his leadership, Cohere hit $100M in ARR. Prior to founding Cohere, Nick was a researcher at Google Brain and a protégé of Geoffrey Hinton.
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‘Revolutionary’ AI-Assisted Tool Could Help Stroke Patients Make Full Recovery
Doctors say the technology could triple the likelihood of recovery without a disability
A “revolutionary” new AI tool could help half of all stroke patients to make a full recovery by allowing doctors to diagnose them faster than traditional methods. The brain scanning technology introduced by NHS England has been shown to reduce the time between someone presenting at a hospital with a stroke and receiving treatment by more than 60 minutes – potentially tripling the likelihood of recovery without a disability.
Experts have hailed the tool as “key” to helping medics rapidly diagnose and treat strokes, saying it allows doctors to make “faster decisions” and ultimately improve outcomes for patients.
During a stroke, the blood supply to part of the brain is blocked or reduced, which leads to brain cells dying at a rate of around 2 million per minute. The earlier doctors are able to diagnose and treat the condition, the less likely patients are to experience long-term disabilities such as paralysis, memory loss and communication problems.
The tool has been used to interpret more than 60,000 patients brain scans across 100 NHS stroke services since last summer, leading to more patients receiving “potentially lifesaving treatments” earlier. Data shows more patients are receiving thrombolysis, a procedure that can significantly improve stroke outcomes by breaking down clots in blood vessels when given in early stages, year-on-year.
More on the new AI tools that help stroke patients recover on INDEPENDENT
Can AI Fix Housing And Healthcare Affordability? | The a16z Podcast
Housing and healthcare make up nearly half of household spending, yet both sectors are riddled with inefficiency and rising costs. In this episode, Erik Torenberg is joined by a16z Growth partner Alex Immerman and Minna Song and Tony Stoyanov, cofounders of EliseAI, to discuss why they’re tackling these critical industries and how AI can transform everything from leasing and maintenance to patient scheduling and compliance. The conversation covers:
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A Creator Just Turned His Artificial Intelligence Music Into A Record Deal
Oliver McCann, who goes by the artist name imoliver, has signed a deal with a record label. That’s not unusual in and of itself, but what is striking is that all of his music has been created by AI, which he puts to self-penned lyrics. It’s apparently the first deal of its kind and came after one of his tracks hit three millions streams on Spotify, Associated Press reported. McCann’s deal is sure to stoke the controversial debate about the growing role of AI in the music industry.
Why is this important?
Well, as McCann himself said: “I have no musical talent at all. I can’t sing, I can’t play instruments, and I have no musical background at all.”
This is sure to irk talented musicians who spend years learning their instruments while struggling to make a living out of their craft.
On top of that, the generative-AI software that McCann uses, like Suno and Udio, uses real artists’ music to train their AI models.
Why should I care? As generative AI software grows in popularity, expect to see more deals like McCann’s. Whether you choose to embrace tracks that are wholly or partially constructed using AI is your choice, but prepare yourself as there’s going to be a lot more of them going forward.
More on McCann’s record deal for his AI music on DigitalTrends
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