Wellington-based AI accounting startup Sterling has raised $3.8 million in a seed round, one of the larger early-stage financings seen recently in New Zealand’s technology sector. The company says the funding will help it expand in New Zealand, Australia and the United States.
The round was led by trans-Tasman venture capital firm Blackbird and included alumni from companies such as Xero, Vend, Pushpay and Trade Me.
AI accounting product and use cases
Sterling, founded just 10 months ago, develops software to automate routine finance and accounting work. Chief executive and co-founder Nik Wakelin said Sterling was designed to act as an “autopilot” for finance teams rather than just another AI chatbot.
“It sits in your finance team, in your inbox and all your systems, picks up things as they arrive and works out where everything goes and files it for you,” Wakelin said. “The idea is by the time your finance team turns up in the morning and has their coffee, everything’s done and prepped for them, ready to review and tick off.”
The company was founded in October last year by Wakelin, formerly of Deliveroo, MinuteDock and Gelato.io, and Ludgwig Wendzich, whose background includes Apple, Vend and Lightspeed. Wakelin said the idea emerged from conversations with their wives, who are both accountants.
Wakelin said advances in generative AI had made it possible to automate tasks that previously required human judgement, such as reviewing expenses, matching transactions and investigating accounting discrepancies. He added that finance teams often employed highly qualified accountants to perform repetitive tasks that consumed large amounts of time: “We kind of call them 70-IQ jobs. You’ve got these qualified chartered accountants, 170-IQ people, doing the 70-IQ jobs and we want to take that away from them.”
Despite being only 10 months old, Sterling said it has been rolled out to users since March and has already completed about 1200 hours of finance work for customers. Clients include honey exporter Manukora, early childhood software company Storypark and insurance broker Echelon.
Wakelin said securing backing from Blackbird and well-known figures from New Zealand’s technology sector would help accelerate the company’s growth. “We really want to build the next generational technology company,” he said.
