Ramp, a startup that uses artificial intelligence to automate corporate finance tasks, on Wednesday said it had raised $500 million in its latest funding round. The Series E-2 round, led by Iconiq Growth with participation from existing investors including Founders Fund and D1 Capital Partners, values the startup at $22.5 billion, it said. The infusion of new capital will go toward hiring engineers, product experts and marketing and sales staff who will focus on building and selling Ramp’s AI agents, according to co-founder and Chief Executive Eric Glyman. The startup is best known for its corporate credit card and its expense management system. Ramp’s fundraise coincides with the fast-paced growth of AI agents, the autonomous bots that can perform tasks on behalf of humans. The New York City-based startup’s AI agent focuses on helping corporate finance teams automate tedious aspects of their work, such as compliance for employees’ expense reports. Future versions will help procurement teams manage their daily tasks and streamline bookkeeping, Glyman said. “Functionally, we’re teaching software to think like people,” he said. The future of corporate finance, Glyman added, will be much more automated. Since launching its first AI agent earlier in July, Ramp said thousands of customers have signed on to try it. Richard Gobea, a finance manager at Quora, said the question-and-answer website is using Ramp’s AI agent to automate the work of an entry-level accountant or clerk who typically checks employee expenses against a corporate policy document.

Full report : US based finance AI startup, Ramp raises $500 million to further develop AI-based agents, CEO says.