Slope Secures $30 Million Venture Round to Expand Its Business-to-Business Payments Platform
A New Milestone in the Quest to Digitize B2B Payments
Slope, a leading business-to-business (B2B) payments platform for enterprise companies, has closed on a venture round of $30 million. The company plans to utilize the new funds for product development as it continues to take on bigger clients and expand its offerings.
A Brief History of Slope’s Journey
Since launching in 2021, co-founders Lawrence Lin Murata and Alice Deng have been working towards digitizing the massive $125 trillion B2B payments market. The core of Slope’s technology is built around order-to-cash workflow automation utilizing artificial intelligence-driven tools for checkout, customer and vendor risk assessment, payment reconciliation, and cash management.
Leveraging AI to Drive Innovation
The new investment follows Slope’s recent product launch of SlopeGPT, which Murata called the first payments risk model powered by GPT. This innovative use of AI is a key differentiator for Slope, as evidenced by the company’s early adoption of AI in its technology.
"We’ve been involved with AI since before the hype cycle," said Murata. "As we collect more data, we’re able to leverage larger and larger models, so we swapped GPT, which is building on top of GPT embeddings for payments risk, an essential application for succeeding between payments."
A Growing Network of Investors
Slope’s new funding round includes major participation from OpenAI’s Sam Altman. The investment was not only highly sought after but also preempted, a rare occurrence given the current economic environment and drying up of venture capital investments.
"Slope’s quest to reshape the B2B payments experience and bring the sector into the digital age is audacious — and that’s why I chose to back them," said Altman in a written statement.
A Strong Track Record
In total, Slope has raised $187 million in equity and debt. The company’s customer pipeline has evolved from mainly working with startups to now including enterprise clients such as Fiserv. As a result, both volume and company revenue have increased 17x since last year.
"We really need the transition to be a smooth experience for people to adjust to the digital B2B payments world," said Murata. "We don’t see AI as being something that’s very front-and-center in that user experience. Instead, we actually see it as an invisible experience that’s helping automate and streamline the processes, even if they’re not aware of what is the technology happening behind it."
A Bright Future Ahead
With this latest funding round, Slope is well-positioned to continue its rapid growth and expansion into new markets.
"We’re excited about the future," said Murata. "We believe that our platform has the potential to revolutionize the way businesses make payments, and we’re committed to continuing to innovate and push the boundaries of what’s possible."
Key Players Involved
- Lawrence Lin Murata: Co-founder and CEO of Slope
- Alice Deng: Co-founder and CTO of Slope
- Sam Altman: Co-lead investor in Slope’s new funding round and CEO of OpenAI
- Union Square Ventures: Co-lead investor in Slope’s new funding round
- Y Combinator, monashees, Jack Altman from Lattice, Alex Bouaziz from Deel, Mathilde Collin from Front, Michael Tannenbaum from Brex, and Rujul Zaparde from Zip: Other investors involved in the funding round
