Airbase, the leading corporate spend management solutions provider, announced today that it has secured $60M in a strategic funding round.
This new investment brings the total funding raised by Airbase to $90M and will accelerate the Airbase platform’s growth as the corporate spend market segments and matures.
Airbase raises $60M as the corporate spend market segments, matures
Airbase is an American corporate spend management platform founded in 2017. Their mission is to provide businesses with the insight and flexibility they need to manage their finances effectively, and more importantly – securely.
Airbase allows enterprise customers to organise, store, audit and approve spend across multiple currencies, departments and locations. The company offers a reliable yet relatively simple cloud-based solution incorporating analytics and machine learning capabilities while maintaining tight security protocols.
Airbase recently closed a Series B funding round of $60 million which will fund its continued focus on expanding into new markets, including the growing corporate spend market segment. The company has grown considerably since its first Series A fundraising in 2019 by continuing to develop financial intelligence solutions for businesses of all sizes across many industries such as hospitality, retail, manufacturing and more.
Along with this new venture capital investment comes an influx of expertise from some of the biggest names in tech financing such as Index Ventures and General Catalyst.
Airbase Raises $60M
Airbase recently announced that it has raised $60M in its latest round of funding. This sum will continue Airbase’s growth in the corporate spend market, which is quickly maturing.
This round of funding was led by Andreessen Horowitz and is the largest ever amount of funding for Airbase. Let’s explore the various aspects of this round of funding and what it means for Airbase.
Investment from Top VCs
Airbase, which provides the leading corporate spend management system for finance and accounting teams, has announced a $60 million Series C funding round to fuel its continued growth in the corporate spend market as the segment matures. The latest round of financing was led by Threshold Ventures, with participation from other prominent venture capital firms including Sequoia Capital, DCVC (Data Collective), Index Ventures, Andy Rachleff’s Wealthfront Opportunity Fund and Slack Fund.
This brings Airbase’s total funding to more than $100 million since it was founded in late 2016. This is one of the largest VC rounds ever secured by a corporate spend management company. It comes amid a period of strong growth for Airbase as it continues to expand its solutions suite and add new customers worldwide. In addition, the money will accelerate product innovation and go-to-market strategies that allow businesses to connect all stages of corporate finance processes on one platform.
Trends within the corporate spend market indicate increased demand from finance teams seeking integrated solutions that can automate processes using intelligent technologies like AI and predictive insights into their financial data. With this investment now secured, Airbase will be able to pursue these ambitions more vigorously by scaling up its operations, expanding its product capabilities, building new partnerships with external stakeholders and investing further in customer experience technology.
How the Funds Will Be Used
Airbase, a leader in the corporate spend market, announced it has closed a $60M funding round. This latest injection of financing will be used to expand and deepen the Airbase platform—allowing users to realise greater control and visibility over spending while providing businesses access to more ancillary services and insights.
The $60M in new capital will enable the company to accelerate development on its single-source tech layer, modernising corporate finance operations with AI-driven automation capabilities that reduce costs and increase transparency. Additionally, Airbase plans to acquire additional companies specialising in specific corporate spending areas to drive further integration and evolution within its technology stack.
By investing heavily in its technology, Airbase aims to create a comprehensive platform that simplifies corporate finance management from beginning to end–enabling businesses of all sizes to make well-informed financial decisions without risking their bottom line. In addition, the new funds will provide the necessary resources for Airbase’s continued growth in the corporate spend market as it segments, matures, and evolves with changing requirements for financial technologies.
Corporate Spend Market Segments
Airbase’s $60M raise reflects the continued growth of the corporate spend market, as more and more companies are utilising digital tools and services to manage their outgoings. Additionally, this market continues to segment and mature, with various solutions available to businesses of all sizes.
This article will discuss the benefits of this segmentation and the many opportunities available in this rapidly changing market.
Corporate Card Market
The corporate card market is the largest segment of the corporate spend market and accounts for more than two-thirds of all payments. Corporate cards are used by businesses to purchase goods and services from suppliers. In addition, corporations use these cards to manage spending, control budgets, and quickly process payments for contractors and employees.
Benefits of using corporate cards include an easy way to track employee spending, enhanced data security and fraud protection, faster payment settlements, improved visibility into travel expenses, more efficient cash flow management, and greater convenience for customers.
In addition to traditional corporate cards typically associated with Visa or MasterCard networks, there is a growing demand for virtual or ‘fintech cards that have the same benefits without accruing debt on the company balance sheet. This trend has been driven by recent advances in digital payments infrastructure and growing concerns over protecting against cyber-attacks. As companies embrace digital transformation initiatives across their departments and operations, they are increasingly turning towards virtual card solutions like Airbase which offers better scalability, flexibility in configuring limits on individual vendor spend or number of transactions allowed per day/week/month/year; B2B integration of vendor payment information with internal processes; automated setup & shutdown fees; long-term user retention & compliance tracking rewards; custom analytics & reporting;and lastly automation for integrations & reconciliation processes.
Virtual Card Market
The virtual card market has emerged as one of the key segments in the corporate spend market, and Airbase has led the way in this space with its innovative technology solutions. With Airbase’s $60M investment, the company is further solidifying its position as a leader in this market by providing enhanced services for enterprise customers.
Virtual cards offer numerous benefits for corporate customers, such as improved cost management and security, more efficient reconciliation and disbursements, stronger fraud protection, enhanced visibility into employee spending and faster payment processing times. These advantages are coupled with Airbase’s state-of-the-art payment platform that offers an intuitive user interface, powerful analytics tools and a wide range of integrated vendor solutions.
By leveraging its new funding to expand its customer base while continuing to develop advanced features to stay ahead of ever-evolving business needs, Airbase is positioning itself at the forefront of the virtual card market space. In addition, the company recently announced plans to hire new staff to facilitate growth across departments while investing heavily in product development initiatives such as predictive analytics capabilities and enhanced spending controls to better serve large enterprises.
With a focus on customer engagement and technology advancements, Airbase is poised to capitalise on its leadership role within the virtual card segment of the corporate spend market as it continues its rapid expansion plans.
Automated Expense Management Market
Airbase, an automated expense management provider, has recently announced the close of a $60 million Series B funding round. The funding was led by new investor M12 (formerly Microsoft Ventures), bringing the total amount raised since 2017 to over $100 million.
The capital will go towards continued expansion in the corporate spend market. This includes further development of their cloud software that helps managing expenses and creating invoices more efficiently.
Airbase is participating in the growth of the automated expense management market, a segment of the broader corporate spend market, as technology gains greater adoption among small and large enterprises. Automated expense management solutions are designed to automate mundane manual tasks like requesting reimbursements and clicking through multiple validations on credit cards when approving expenses. Solutions like Airbase’s can be integrated with existing accounting software for easier implementation, reducing costs. In addition, it helps companies acquire real-time insights into their corporate spend performance and aids in compliance adherence by easily detecting areas where there may be abnormal or unauthorised spend arising from fraud or data entry mistakes.
Overall, these solutions create an environment for companies to better track expenditure internally, enforce spending policies and drive greater accountability in employee behaviour towards corporate spending habits through better visibility into financial trends such as monthly allocations or annual budget comparisons often impossible to assess manually.
Airbase’s Position in the Market
Airbase made some big news when it recently announced that it raised $60M to fuel its continued growth in the corporate spend market. This movie demonstrates Airbase’s drive to capitalise on a market increasingly segmenting into different niches.
With this major investment, Airbase is uniquely positioned to capitalise on the maturing corporate spend market. Let’s take a look at their position in more detail.
Unique Combination of Features
Airbase, the corporate spend platform, announced a $60M Series B funding that will enable it to benefit from the growing maturation of, and segmentation in, the corporate spend market. Upon closer examination of Airbase’s features and offerings this new round of funding appears extra meaningful.
The platform provides tailored solutions for CFOs and finance teams with multi-layered capabilities and unique combinations of features across automation, analytics and instant payments. This set up allows customers to effortlessly streamline their accounts payable process, increase the velocity of their receipts cycle time and have greater visibility into spend patterns to gain more control over their finances. As a result, Airbase is one of the few systems that offer a unified package to manage all aspects of modern financial operations for its customers.
The platform also has powerful integrations with popular cloud accounting tools such as QuickBooks and NetSuite providing companies access to a system-of-record view across all finance processes similar to those offered by larger corporations. Airbase customers particularly stand out due its strong focus on improving company culture by fostering collaboration amongst workflows instead of relying on siloed approaches across different departments.
Thus, it is no surprise that Airbase was able to raise $60M at a valuation exceeding prior funding rounds while providing advanced yet iterative features designed to lead companies
into the future. In addition, this new round signals strength within the corporate spend market and further empowers customers within their respective industries.
Comprehensive Platform
Airbase has pioneered the corporate spend market, providing companies with an intuitive and comprehensive platform that simplifies payment approvals, helps manage virtual cards, and automates the expense workflow. With their newly raised $60M in funding, they aim to expand their offerings further, consolidating businesses’ payments and expenses into one secure and easy-to-use platform that optimises cash flow.
The Airbase platform allows companies to customise to their unique needs such as automated expense report Reviews & Submissions; ACH payments, wire transfers & electronic payments; all from one central dashboard. The Airbase card program further provides purchasing control with virtual prepaid cards for international payments and budgeting notifications for peace of mind when managing expenses. The card program also includes features like automated vendor reconciliations that match vendor invoices with transactions on the company’s GENERAL LEDGER; training users to comply with corporate policies and spot fraudulent transactions before they cause real damage to an organisation’s bottom line.
In the past year alone, Airbase has experienced great success in user growth and customer adoption — they’ve effectively grown despite the global COVID-19 pandemic by having customers including Cushman & Wakefield, Domino’s Pizza, Codecademy turn first-time buyers into active users. This demonstrates the versatility of Airbase’s platform and its acceptability among countless types of businesses worldwide.
Enterprise-Grade Infrastructure
Airbase has invested heavily in enterprise-grade infrastructure to equip companies of any size with the ability to manage their entire corporate spending process. This includes sophisticated technology and deep integrations with leading enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, software as a service (SaaS) platforms, financial institutions and corporate card programs. In addition, Airbase provides tools that enable customers to track spend across the organisation, create budget-tracking capabilities and automate reviews of vendor contracts.
The company’s cloud-based platform also supports corporate card issuance and acceptance across spend categories including travel, office supplies, marketing services, raw materials, professional services and much more — all within a single platform. Additionally, its digital payment system can provide expense reporting on purchases made through bank transfers, rewards, or credit cards. In September 2020, the company raised $60 million in a Series B round led by Battery Ventures. The funds were used for investments in product development, further expansion of its customer base and continued segmentation of the market it serves. With its new capital injection Airbase is now geared to build larger scale marketplaces for the corporate spend industry as it rapidly matures.
