Slope Secures $30 Million to Enhance B2B Payments Platform

Slope, a platform designed for business-to-business (B2B) payments for enterprise firms, has closed a venture round worth $30 million aimed at expanding its operations. The company’s primary goal for the newly acquired funds is to further product development while catering to larger clientele.

Slope was established in 2021 by co-founders Lawrence Lin Murata and Alice Deng, who embarked on a mission to digitize the $125 trillion B2B payments market. The firm’s technology is rooted in order-to-cash workflow automation, using AI-driven tools for various functions. These include checkout, risk assessment, payment reconciliation, and cash management.

Introducing SlopeGPT

The recent investment comes after Slope’s launch of SlopeGPT, described by Murata as the first payments risk model powered by GPT. The co-founder expressed that AI has always been a significant differentiator for the company, even prior to the current AI hype. As Slope amasses more data, it can leverage larger models, and GPT has become an essential application for successful payments.

Union Square Ventures spearheaded the new investment round, following previous contributions to Slope’s $8 million seed round in 2021 and $24 million Series A funding in 2022. Notably, the company also received significant support from OpenAI’s Sam Altman.

Investors’ High Demand

Altman applauded Slope’s audacious mission to transform the B2B payments sector and usher it into the digital age, a sentiment that was echoed by other investors. Murata revealed that the company received multiple offers from investors, with the investment round being oversubscribed and preempted, a rarity in the current economic environment.

Other notable contributors to the round include Y Combinator, monashees, and leaders from Lattice, Deel, Front, Brex, and Zip. To date, Slope has raised a total of $187 million in equity and debt.

Impressive Growth

Initially, Slope catered primarily to startups, but its customer pipeline has evolved to mainly serve enterprise companies, including Fiserv. This evolution has led to a 17x increase in both volume and company revenue since last year, according to Deng. Murata emphasized the importance of a smooth transition to the digital B2B payments world, and sees AI as an invisible force that helps automate and streamline processes.