AI & Finance™ | News for the Week Ending 9/26/25

AppZen, the leading Agentic AI platform for finance teams, announced it raised $180 million in growth funding. This round was led by Riverwood Capital, one of the leading investment firms solely dedicated to technology growth and scalability.  

AppZen is the AI-native platform for autonomous finance. Powered by proprietary ZenLM models and the Mastermind AI Automation Platform, AppZen’s domain-trained AI Agents streamline end-to-end workflows across T&E, accounts payable, and corporate card programs, transforming finance teams. More than 500 global enterprises, including over 65 of the Fortune 500, rely on AppZen to automate transaction processing and reduce costs, delivering over $2 billion in savings and enabling finance teams to reallocate up to two-thirds of their manual workload to higher-value activities. 

The Series D fundraise allows AppZen to further accelerate the adoption of agentic AI at the enterprise, converting standard operating procedures into configurable, production-ready, digital coworkers, enabling CFOs and controllers to replace over 50% of manual work and scale operations without additional headcount or BPO. 

Auquan, the market leader in AI agents for mission-critical financial services work, today announced its Credit Agent, the first and only AI agent that autonomously completes entire credit analysis and monitoring workflows to provide comprehensive evaluation of lending opportunities and borrower performance. Unlike other AI tools that merely assist analysts with research and summarization tasks, Auquan’s AI agents independently execute workflows end-to-end, from data gathering through structured reporting, freeing professionals to focus on high-value work. Forty percent of the top 50 global financial services firms use Auquan’s AI agents. 

Credit teams face mounting pressure to evaluate more deals in less time as private credit markets continue rapid expansion. Analysts typically spend 3-5 days per opportunity sifting through data rooms, financial statements, and market information to draft credit memos — with 80% or more of their time consumed by manual data processing rather than strategic analysis. The growing number of active credits creates additional challenges, as borrowers often report using inconsistent formats across various document types. Auquan’s Credit Agent changes this by autonomously handling entire credit workflows — from initial screening through detailed analysis to complete memo generation — enabling teams to evaluate 2-3x more opportunities while maintaining thorough standards. 

While some solutions are limited to analyzing public information without private data integration capabilities and others process internal datasets but lack broader market context, Auquan uniquely operates across both domains simultaneously. Credit teams can use Auquan to analyze proprietary internal datasets and secure data room information alongside public and subscription market data within a unified analytical framework. This comprehensive approach eliminates analytical silos and provides a complete picture that competitors simply cannot match, allowing for more nuanced risk assessment and opportunity identification in the private credit landscape. 

Avalara, Inc., a leader in modern tax compliance automation, today announced the launch of its enhanced Avalara App for Stripe Billing and Checkout. This update delivers a more seamless experience for users integrating with Stripe’s latest Tax API, enabling faster processing, real-time tax previews, and access to additional compliance tools. 

With Avalara’s tax and compliance technology powered by AI now embedded directly into Stripe’s ecosystem, businesses can automatically calculate and apply the correct tax rates to transactions in real-time, reducing errors and ensuring greater compliance across jurisdictions.  

Avalara’s upgraded app supports a full range of compliance needs for Stripe customers—not just tax calculation. Users also gain access to Avalara’s broader compliance suite, including sales tax licenses and registrations, returns filing, exemption certificate management, cross-border and tariff calculations, and e-invoicing. 

Bloomberg today announced the launch of AI Portfolio Commentary, an AI-powered feature within PORT Enterprise, Bloomberg’s premium portfolio and risk analytics offering. The new feature uses AI to generate detailed explanations of return drivers, streamlining workflows and simplifying reporting across fixed income and equity portfolios. 

With built-in AI capabilities, PORT Enterprise now delivers contextualized portfolio summaries by combining a portfolio’s attribution data with media coverage from sources like Bloomberg News. This solution enables clients to quickly surface a summary of key performance drivers and relevant news, then shift their focus to more strategic, high-impact analysis. 

PORT Enterprise is used by investment teams at some of the largest asset managers and asset owners across the world as a primary portfolio analysis solution, utilizing its award-winning performance attribution and risk models. This release brings a top-down, granular analysis of allocation and selection decisions with a wealth of Bloomberg company-level data and news, and allows users to effortlessly generate performance attribution commentary with reliable and actionable insights. 

DeFi Technologies Inc. (the “Company” or “DeFi Technologies”) (Nasdaq: DEFT) (CBOE CA: DEFI) (GR: R9B), a financial technology company bridging the gap between traditional capital markets and decentralized finance (“DeFi”), is pleased to announce a landmark collaboration with SovFi Inc. (“SovFi”), a sovereign finance company that designs principal protected, capital appreciating instruments and market liquidity solutions for large capital market operators. The collaboration introduces a comprehensive sovereign finance framework designed to help countries reduce debt, attract foreign direct investment, and deepen sovereign capital-market liquidity. 

The platform delivers a new class of principal-protected, capital-appreciating sovereign instruments alongside the DeFi Technologies Group’s integrated stack for issuance, liquidity, analytics, tokenization, and BTQ’s post-quantum secure settlement, targeting a market that exceeds one hundred trillion dollars. 

Global sovereign debt exceeds one hundred trillion dollars. Traditional sovereign bonds are generally safe but provide limited upside, leaving governments with few tools to reduce debt through market mechanisms.SovFi’s patent-pending structure converts bond coupon payments into Bitcoin inside a regulated exchange-traded product issued exclusively through Valour, a wholly owned subsidiary of DeFi Technologies. The principal remains intact in the underlying bond. At maturity, investors receive the bond principal plus the market value of the accrued Bitcoin. The result is a principal-protected instrument with a potential path to capital appreciation. 

Edifecs, a Cotiviti business and pioneer in healthcare data interoperability, today announced the next generation of its Population Payment Management platform powered by agentic artificial intelligence (AI). The enhanced solution delivers a practical, scalable application of AI to address some of the most persistent challenges in healthcare value-based payment (VBP) transformation. 

At the core of Edifecs’ VBP processing platform, agentic AI leverages intelligent, task-oriented “agents” that understand healthcare payment objectives and the nuances of VBP program design. These agents actively monitor context to trigger the correct workflows, generate real-time insights, and execute complex workflow analyses end-to-end. The agents automate traditionally resource-intensive tasks—enabling organizations to scale value-based programs faster, lower administrative costs, and gain timely, actionable intelligence to support confident decision-making. By improving settlement accuracy and speed, these agents can reduce both administrative and medical loss ratios, enhancing financial performance for healthcare payers. 

Edifecs’ approach to agentic AI prioritizes responsible deployment with human oversight, ensuring agents augment – rather than replace – healthcare professionals’ expertise while maintaining strict data privacy, transparency, and regulatory compliance standards. Importantly, these AI agents are never used for clinical decision-making or medical necessity determinations. Instead, they are purpose-built to power VBP contract design and settlement, streamline VBC workflows, and deliver clear, actionable insights on contract performance and financial outcomes. 

The EY organization today announces an alliance between Boomi, the leader in AI-driven automation, and Ernst & Young LLP (EY US) to help clients enhance their efficiency, agility and data integrity through integrated and innovative services and solutions. 

The EY–Boomi Alliance leverages Boomi’s advanced artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities and comprehensive Boomi Enterprise Platform and automates and streamlines critical processes, helping clients achieve faster business outcomes. The Alliance offers clients the opportunity to smoothly connect systems, manage data flows and orchestrate AI through a single solution, thus helping to enhance the efficiency of their operations. Furthermore, the Alliance allows clients to benefit in areas such as data integration and management, enterprise resource planning implementation, tax and finance transformation, supply chain optimization, customer experience enhancement, risk management and more. 

Intuit Inc. (Nasdaq: INTU), the global financial technology platform that makes Intuit TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks, and Mailchimp, has rapidly advanced its proprietary Generative AI Operating System (GenOS) over the past 90 days to accelerate development of done-for-you agentic AI experiences at scale across its platform and products, fueling financial success for consumers, businesses, and accountants. 

Intuit’s GenOS is already empowering Intuit technologists to turn ideas into groundbreaking agentic AI experiences that connect customers to a virtual team of AI agents and AI-enabled human experts to automate everyday tasks and manage complex workflows and entire processes. For example, QuickBooks Online Virtual Team of AI Agents and Intuit Enterprise Suite Agentic AI Experiences and Financial Management Capabilities, introduced in July for small and mid-market businesses, were built with GenOS. 

Now, Intuit is streamlining end-to-end agent development by bolstering its suite of platform capabilities and tools within GenOS. New custom-trained Financial Intuit LLMs are fine-tuned on financial data sets and deliver personalized experiences with high accuracy and superior results for latency and cost. These state-of-the-art models currently power agentic AI capabilities in QuickBooks Online and Intuit Enterprise Suite, and many other agents are in development for future product releases. Early results with these models demonstrate 5% improved accuracy and 50% reduced latency for some accounting workflows compared to certain general-purpose off-the-shelf LLMs, and indicate promising results for reducing costs. 

Labyrinth, Inc., the nation’s leader in nonprofit compliance services with over 35 years of experience, today announced a strategic partnership with K1x, the fintech company behind the industry-leading 990 Tracker®. This collaboration unites Labyrinth’s state compliance expertise with K1x’s trusted IRS-certified 990 e-filing solution, giving nonprofits and their advisors a single platform to manage both federal and state requirements. 

Through this strategic partnership, nonprofits and their tax professionals can now address charitable registration, annual reports, fundraising disclosures, and registered agent requirements directly within 990 Tracker®. By eliminating duplicative processes and reducing the need for multiple vendors, the partnership enables organizations to fundraise with confidence, streamline compliance workflows, and focus more resources on advancing their missions. 

Effective immediately, current 990 Tracker® users can access these expanded capabilities within the platform. Together, Labyrinth and K1x offer the nonprofit sector a comprehensive compliance solution that combines unmatched expertise with modern technology. 

MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: MKTX), the operator of a leading electronic trading platform for fixed-income securities, today announced the global launch of Axess IQ Connect, a lightweight web-based application for Private Banks and Wealth Managers that is accessible on any device and designed to connect client advisors to their trading desks. 

Axess IQ Connect is an extension of Axess IQ, a “one-stop-shop” Execution Management System (EMS) and order workflow solution designed to enhance speed, efficiency and transparency in fixed-income trading for Private Banks. The web-based app provides client advisors with transparent, direct access to live market insights, including high-quality liquidity data, as well as bond pricing powered by CP+, MarketAxess’s AI-powered real-time pricing engine, along with real-time visibility into their order queue. 

Additional key features include interactive watchlists and an optional order management function, which allows advisors to submit client orders from Axess IQ Connect directly into their trading desk’s Axess IQ order queue to track execution status in real-time from order entry to trade completion. 

The McGowan Companies (“McGowan”), one of the nation’s largest insurance conglomerates, today announced a strategic acquisition of Limit, the nation’s leading Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled, digital, wholesale insurance brokerage, via an asset purchase agreement.     

Limit has two divisions: (1) Limit Wholesale; and, (2) Limit AI. Limit Wholesale is an AI-enabled, digital, wholesale insurance brokerage that specializes in Cyber Liability and Technology E&O. Limit functions as an “insurance one-stop-shop,” where retail insurance brokerages (“retailers”) can shop up to 100 insurance markets, all in one place, online, 24 hours per day. Retailers can submit applications, then receive multiple, bindable quotes, in an extremely-fast and efficient manner, using Limit’s cutting-edge technology.  Retailers can rate, quote, bind, and issue policies online. Other Lines of Business will be added to Limit in the near future.  

Limit AI offers a set of online AI-enabled, digital, Risk Management tools that allow both retail and wholesale insurance brokerages to compare quotes, compare policies, analyze coverage, and prepare customer correspondence.  

Numeral, the AI-powered sales tax compliance platform, today announced a $35 million Series B led by Mayfield, with participation from Benchmark, Uncork Capital, Y Combinator, and Mantis. The announcement follows a year of rapid growth for Numeral, which has processed over $5 billion in transaction volume, filed 150,000 sales tax returns, and achieved 3.5x year-over-year revenue growth. 

Sales tax has become one of the most complex and costly compliance issues facing businesses. In the U.S. alone, there are over 11,000 tax jurisdictions, each with its own rules, deadlines, and definitions. In the first half of 2025, there have been over 400 sales tax rate changes, a substantial increase year over year. Even modestly sized companies must register and file in 30+ states, juggling monthly, quarterly, and annual filings. 

This constant regulatory churn forces companies to spend tens of thousands of dollars each year on compliance tools, audits, and tax specialists just to stay current. Numeral solves that with a fully automated platform that manages the entire sales tax lifecycle: from nexus detection and state registration to filing, remittance, and exemption certificate management. The company offers an error-free filing guarantee, white glove support, and simple pricing. 

OneChronos, the technology company advancing auction theory and computer science to optimize financial markets, today announced the appointment of Douglas L. Peterson, former CEO of S&P Global, as Executive Chairman. Mr. Peterson will play a central role in strengthening institutional relationships, guiding global growth across asset classes, and scaling OneChronos’ trading model internationally. 

Mr. Peterson brings more than three decades of leadership experience at the forefront of global finance. As CEO of S&P Global, one of the world’s most influential providers of financial information and benchmarks, Mr. Peterson was a visionary leader who led the Company through transformational growth and success. During his tenure as CEO, S&P Global completed the landmark acquisition of IHS Markit and delivered substantial value — growing market capitalization from $16 billion to over $150 billion with over $30 billion in capital returned to shareholders. Previously, Mr. Peterson spent 26 years at Citigroup, including as Chief Operating Officer of Citibank, N.A., Citigroup’s principal banking entity that operates in more than 100 countries. He also spent six years as CEO of Citigroup Japan, where he managed operations spanning capital markets, corporate and investment banking, and global transaction services. 

Launched in 2022, OneChronos has become one of the fastest-growing equity trading venues in the U.S. Its Smart Market technology solves unprecedented technical challenges by operating combinatorial auctions at the speed and scale of capital markets, running sophisticated optimization algorithms within milliseconds to unlock trading opportunities often missed by legacy formats. This model has resonated with major broker-dealers and buy-side firms, driving adoption that now sees as much as $10 billion traded daily. Since launch, OneChronos has facilitated over two trillion dollars in securities transactions, proof that its system can scale at the speed and volume of global capital markets. 

Options Technology, a leading provider of cloud-enabled managed services to the global financial sector, today announced it has achieved a Microsoft Solutions Partner specialization for Threat Detection. The achievement reinforces Options’ leadership in delivering secure, compliant, and private cloud services engineered for enterprise clients in the financial industry. 

This achievement follows earlier Solutions Partner designations in Private Cloud, Modern Work, Data and AI, Security, Infrastructure Solutions, and Digital & App Innovation (Azure). Together, these six designations underscore Options’ global leadership in delivering cutting-edge cloud solutions and integrated technology for the world’s most demanding financial markets. 

Microsoft’s Solutions Partner specialization for Threat Detection recognizes partners who demonstrate deep knowledge, extensive experience, and proven success deploying Microsoft Threat Protection, Microsoft Cloud App Security, and Microsoft Sentinel, formerly Azure Sentinel workloads; a key differentiator for Options customers. The Threat Protection specialization demonstrates expertise in implementing and managing security solutions. Partners with this specialization have demonstrated proficiency through their partner capability score, which is based on performance, skilling, and customer success, signifying their ability to provide customers with advanced security and compliance services. 

Google and PayPal today announced a multiyear strategic partnership focused on advancing several commerce solutions. The collaboration will deliver innovative solutions that transform how businesses and consumers transact across platforms and devices. Combining their expertise and scale, the companies aim to deliver frictionless digital commerce experiences and set a new standard for commerce ecosystem innovation.   

PayPal and Google are collaborating to create new AI shopping experiences and developing standards that will help shape the future of agentic commerce across the industry. The partnership will bring together PayPal’s global payment infrastructure, data-driven personalization and trusted identity solutions, alongside Google’s AI expertise to deliver new AI experiences. The companies, along with many others, are also advocating for the adoption of best practices such as Google’s Agent Payments Protocol, a secure, open, scalable solution paving the way for the future of agentic commerce. 

PayPal’s solutions—including PayPal branded checkout, Hyperwallet and PayPal Payouts solutions—will be integrated throughout various Google products supporting best-in-class seamless experiences. PayPal Enterprise Payments will be one of the key payment providers processing card payments across products like Google Cloud, Google Ads, and Google Play, boosting PayPal’s role as a trusted, payment solution within Google’s core platforms.   PayPal will partner with Google Cloud to reimagine its technology foundations, applications, and infrastructure to power PayPal’s next-generation commerce and payments platform. 

Prophix®, a global leader in financial performance management, today announced Prophix One™ Agents — a category-defining breakthrough that drives finance into the age of autonomy. Built on nearly four decades of expertise, these agents anticipate needs, execute complex tasks, and explain their actions in real time — transforming how finance teams work. 

AI adoption in finance is accelerating, but one blocker has become clear: teams remain stuck in manual cycles that consume their time and erode strategic impact. Prophix One Agents change that. They automate routine work, enabling finance leaders to shift from reporting the past to directing the future. 

Finance is at a breaking point. CFOs are under pressure to deliver real-time insights and lead with agility, but their teams are mired in low-value tasks. Prophix One Agents rewrite this equation. They create capacity without new headcount, clarity without compromise, and confidence in every decision. 

Prove, the leader in digital identity, and Backbase, the world’s first AI-powered banking platform, today announced a strategic partnership aimed at transforming how financial institutions onboard new customers in the United States. The integration brings together seamless, identity verification and secure customer experience to address two of the biggest challenges in digital banking today: fraud prevention and onboarding friction. 

By embedding the Prove Pre-Fill® solution into the Backbase AI-powered Banking Platform, banks and credit unions can now offer a dramatically improved account opening and digital lending experience. With a customer’s consent, the Prove Pre-Fill solution uses their mobile phone number to instantly populate online forms with verified information like their Social Security number, name, address, and date of birth. This eliminates the need for manual data entry, creating a smoother customer experience with fewer errors and lower abandonment rates. 

The solution also fortifies fraud defenses at the front door. The Prove Pre-Fill solution verifies customer information in real-time using Prove’s Identity Graph – a dynamic map of linked devices, credentials, and identifiers that allows Prove to confirm identity deterministically. Due to the effectiveness of the technology, bad actors self-select out resulting in less fraud, while customers experience a seamless onboarding journey. 

Sage (FTSE:SGE), the leader in accounting, financial, HR and payroll technology for small and mid-sized businesses, today announced the UK’s first MTD for Income Tax Agent. Revealed at Accountex Manchester, the new AI-powered agent will transform the complexity of quarterly updates into a single, end-to-end workflow, giving accountants and their clients confidence that nothing has been missed. 

Paving the way for full automation in time for the 2026 deadline, the first release of the MTD Agent is enabled through new Sage Copilot capabilities landing in October. These features help practices prepare for quarterly updates by organising client information, reducing manual admin and making it easier to stay on top of tasks. 

From April 2026, self-employed individuals and landlords earning above £50,000 will be required to keep digital records and submit quarterly updates through compatible software. More than 4 million taxpayers are expected to come into scope as MTD expands over the following years. This marks a significant shift in how accountants and their clients manage tax obligations, creating added pressure on practices already stretched for capacity. 

SkySparc, a trusted global provider of digital transformation solutions for treasury and finance organizations, today announced a majority growth investment from Bregal Milestone, a leading European software private equity firm. The partnership reinforces SkySparc’s long-term commitment to clients, employees, and partners, while creating exciting opportunities for growth and innovation worldwide. 

For more than two decades, SkySparc has been the trusted partner helping treasurers, CFOs, and financial institutions navigate change. From strategic advisory to its proprietary software platform, OmniFi, SkySparc has built a reputation for combining deep expertise with advanced technology to solve the most complex challenges in treasury, asset management, capital markets, and beyond. This investment marks the beginning of a new chapter of growth and innovation, one that builds on this strong foundation and positions SkySparc to have an even greater impact. 

Treasury and finance leaders today face mounting pressures, including volatile markets, evolving regulations, and the need for real-time insights. Many organizations struggle with fragmented data across ERP, treasury management systems, and other finance platforms, which creates inefficiencies, compliance risks, and limited visibility. SkySparc helps clients overcome these barriers by streamlining reporting, automating reconciliations, improving cash visibility, and enabling data-driven decisions with the power of AI. 

Tipalti, the AI-powered platform for finance automation, today announced it has secured $200 million in growth financing from long-time partner Hercules Capital, Inc. (NYSE: HTGC). The financing will fuel Tipalti’s continued investment in artificial intelligence (AI) and product innovation, as well as support its global growth. 

Building on its recent acquisition of AI-native treasury automation startup Statement, Tipalti has introduced the next evolution of Tipalti AI, redesigned with an agentic focus in mind. Enhanced with more powerful, context-aware AI agents, Tipalti AI expands both the breadth and depth of its AI capabilities. Embedded across the full spectrum of finance automation solutions, Tipalti AI enables finance teams to increase productivity, surface richer insights, and focus their time on strategic priorities. 

Designed to meet the demands of today’s real-time economy, Tipalti’s AI Agents eliminate repetitive tasks and surface meaningful insights, freeing finance teams to focus on higher-impact initiatives. Equally important, Tipalti AI maintains a careful balance between automation and control, giving finance professionals the ability to review and override AI-powered decisions, such as critical approvals and payments. 

VersaBank (“VersaBank” or the “Bank”) (TSX:VBNK; NASDAQ:VBNK), a North American leader in business-to-business digital banking, as well as technology solutions for cybersecurity, today announced it has implemented new, internally developed, state-of-the-art artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities within its proprietary core banking technology.  The new AI capabilities enable VersaBank to now actively monitor the entirety of its Receivable Purchase Program (RPP) portfolio continuously in real time, further enhancing its already low-risk credit asset model.  The Bank is developing innovative new financing options within its RPP, including real-time purchasing of cash flow streams, based on its enhanced AI capabilities to further expand market share in Canada and accelerate the ramp up in the United States, which it expects to launch in the near term. 

Wolters Kluwer Tax and Accounting (TAA) Asia Pacific (APAC) today announced significant AI-powered advancements to its award-winning CCH iKnowConnect research platform, further transforming how tax and legal professionals access and apply information. The latest release introduces expert AI capabilities that deliver intelligent, context-aware insights—empowering professionals to uncover answers faster, streamline research workflows, and make more confident decisions. 

Combining cutting-edge generative AI with more than six decades of Wolters Kluwer’s deep domain expertise, CCH iKnowConnect delivers expert AI—a safer, smarter approach to professional research. Built on a responsible AI framework, it provides accurate, transparent, source-linked insights while rigorously safeguarding user data. Every response is anchored in trusted, editorially curated CCH iKnowConnect content, reducing misinformation risk and strengthening confidence in decision-making. This innovation empowers tax and legal professionals to work faster and with greater precision—redefining how authoritative information is accessed and applied. 

The launch of expert AI capabilities in CCH iKnowConnect aligns with Wolters Kluwer’s broader AI strategy, which combines innovation, deep domain expertise, and customer-centric design to deliver reliable, trustworthy transformative solutions across tax and accounting as well as healthcare, legal, finance, and ESG domains. 

Zycus, the pioneer in Agentic AI powered Source-to-Pay (S2P) solutions today announced the launch of Zycus Pay, a new payment solution powered by TransferMate, the world’s leading provider of embedded B2B payments infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Zycus Pay enables clients to seamlessly execute and manage B2B payments directly within the Zycus platform. 

Zycus Pay allows customers to pay suppliers in more than 140 currencies across 200+ countries and territories through multiple methods, including Instant, ACH, Same-Day ACH, Domestic Wire, and International Wire. By integrating TransferMate’s global payments infrastructure directly into the platform, enterprises can now bypass manual banking steps, reduce errors, and accelerate the entire Source-to-Pay cycle. 

TransferMate owns the largest fintech payments infrastructure in the world, with 98 licenses over 92 jurisdictions, the fintech is revolutionising the way businesses operate. Through its globally regulated infrastructure, businesses and software providers can access a full suite of capabilities – including global payments, receivables, and stored funds – via easy-to-use software and APIs.