AppZen, which makes artificially intelligent back office automation software, has raised $13 million in Series A funding. This investment brings the company’s total funding to $17.5 million, and is earmarked to scale the team and business as AppZen focuses on its growing customer base.
The funding round was led by Redpoint Ventures, with participation from original seed investor Resolute Ventures.
Some of AppZen’s customers include Amazon and Intuit, which it provides with an automated T&E expense, auditing and compliance solution powered by its AI platform. The platform combines natural language processing capabilities, which generate human-like sentences in text from pieces of data; with computer vision, a way for software to “read” and recognize images; and machine learning.
AppZen is designed to detect fraud, both intentional and otherwise, as well as errors and misuse. It also provides compliance with regulatory requirements like anti-bribery laws, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act regulations, and Healthcare Sunshine laws.
“Finding errors in expense reports is like finding a needle in a haystack,” said Anant Kale, co-founder and CEO of AppZen, in a statement. “We’re giving companies the ability to achieve 100 percent compliance and protect themselves from both intentional and unintentional fraud, a problem estimated at half trillion dollars in the U.S. alone. AppZen’s platform detects problems before it’s too late by analyzing all expense report data, and cross-checking it with hundreds of external and social media data sources in real-time.”
“Ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements is critical for our success as a global business, ” added Melanie Gallagher, senior manager of global compliance at Intuit. “AppZen’s AI-powered expense auditing service has been easy to use and helped us manage external and internal compliance matters.”
