Slope, a leading business-to-business (B2B) payments platform, has announced the successful closure of its latest venture round, raising a total of $30 million in funding. The company plans to utilize the new capital to fuel product development and expansion, as it continues to cater to larger enterprise clients.
Key Takeaway
Slope, a B2B payments platform, has secured $30 million in funding to further develop its product and expand its clientele. The company aims to digitize the
25 trillion B2B payments market with its AI-driven technology. The investment round, led by Union Square Ventures and joined by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, demonstrates the strong investor interest in Slope’s mission to reshape the B2B payments landscape. With its growing customer base and impressive revenue growth, Slope is well-positioned to lead the transition to a digital future for B2B payments.
Digitizing the B2B Payments Market
Since its launch in 2021, Slope, founded by Lawrence Lin Murata and Alice Deng, has been focused on digitizing the massive $125 trillion B2B payments market. The core of Slope’s technology lies in its order-to-cash workflow automation, which leverages artificial intelligence (AI) tools to streamline processes such as checkout, customer and vendor risk assessment, payment reconciliation, and cash management.
The recent investment follows Slope’s successful launch of SlopeGPT, the first-ever payments risk model powered by GPT, an AI-based language model. This breakthrough in AI technology further enhances Slope’s ability to address the complexities and risks associated with B2B payments.
Impressive Growth and Strong Investor Interest
Slope’s remarkable progress has garnered significant attention from investors, with the latest funding round attracting major participation from industry leaders. Union Square Ventures, a key player in the Series A funding round, led the new investment. Notably, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, also joined the round, attesting to the company’s potential for reshaping the B2B payments landscape.
Slope’s achievement in securing the investment is particularly commendable, given the challenging economic climate and dwindling venture capital opportunities. The company witnessed overwhelming interest from multiple investors and was oversubscribed multiple times, making it a highly sought-after opportunity.
Other prominent participants in the funding round include Y Combinator, Lattice’s Jack Altman, Deel’s Alex Bouaziz, Front’s Mathilde Collin, Brex’s Michael Tannenbaum, and Zip’s Rujul Zaparde. With this latest funding, Slope has successfully raised a total of $187 million in both equity and debt.
Driving the Transition to Digital B2B Payments
Slope’s evolution from serving startups to catering primarily to enterprise clients, such as Fiserv, has resulted in exponential growth. In fact, both transaction volume and company revenue have increased by an impressive 17 times since the previous year. Slope’s CEO, Lawrence Lin Murata, emphasizes the importance of providing a seamless transition to the digital B2B payments world, ensuring that the user experience is smooth and hassle-free.
Murata further explains that while AI plays a crucial role in automating and streamlining processes, it is designed to remain invisible to the user, enabling a seamless and user-friendly payment experience.
