DataSnipper, the automation platform for audit and finance professionals, has raised $100 million in a Series B investment round. The investment, equivalent to over €91.3 million, is led by Index Ventures. After a record year of doubling its customer base and revenue, the scale-up is now valued at $1 billion. DataSnipper's mission is to support auditors worldwide using AI.
DataSnipper was founded six years ago and has more than doubled revenue several years in a row. Originally from Amsterdam, the company serves more than 400,000 users in 125 countries, including auditors from Deloitte, KPMG, EY and PwC. With DataSnipper's tool, auditors can automate up to 90 per cent of their tasks and drive business growth by cutting costs in half.
"On the one hand, more data than ever before is being created, on the other, all that data needs to be verified - that's the starting point of the whole economy," says DataSnipper CEO Vidya Peters. "DataSnipper is at that intersection. We are on a mission to change audit culture and ensure that auditors and finance professionals can focus their expertise on strategy and risk assessment. With DataSnipper, they can play that essential advisory role - something no algorithm can do - instead of sifting through files to verify data."
Although DataSnipper's core market is currently external audits - those organisations that audit company accounts - the new funding will help DataSnipper expand into new market segments. Within these segments are internal auditors, tax consultants, forensic accountants and other sectors dealing with data reconciliation. DataSnipper already has Hilton, Siemens, Frontier Airlines and the Queensland government as customers in these segments, and the company is also growing rapidly within the Asia-Pacific and Latin American markets. The new Series B follows an investment by Insight Partners in September 2022.
Audit sector under historic pressure
One of the main reasons why DataSnipper is being used by external auditors is the historical pressure the industry is under. Regulation and supervision of audits have been tightened following high-profile accounting scandals, leading to calls for more competition in the sector. Meanwhile, companies are producing exponentially more data.
Together, these trends have caused pain and bottlenecks. Auditors struggle with manually combing through documents and reconciling endless streams of information. As a result, auditors are leaving the profession in record numbers: about one in five auditors quit their jobs every year, 80 per cent of auditors leave their employers within five years, and a whopping 82 per cent of auditors who quit last year have six or more years of experience in the profession.
Automation thanks to AI
DataSnipper's AI platform addresses the root causes of auditor burnout by making the auditing process more efficient and enjoyable. The platform integrates automation directly into Excel. Tiring manual work is eliminated by simply having numbers 'snipped' from any file, such as an invoice, bank statement or inventory document. These 'snips' are automatically matched against transactions, creating a foolproof audit trail with a single click. What was once hours of work is now a matter of seconds. DataSnipper, with the help of AI, brings collaboration and dynamism back to a profession that is losing talent due to boring repetitive work.
"It is not a technology looking for a use-case, but an answer to a major unmet need among accountants and finance teams. DataSnipper's growth into new sectors comes directly from user demand. By starting from the Excel workflows of accountants, rather than forcing them to migrate to a new platform, adoption is fast and users remain loyal. We are thrilled to support Vidya and the entire team in their global growth," said Hannah Seal, partner at Index Ventures, who led the round and will be on the board of directors.
DataSnipper has recently released new product suites to better serve financial professionals across various industries. The Cloud Collaboration Suite provides secure and real-time coordination between decentralised teams. The AI Suite lets users automatically analyse unstructured documents and data and gain insights by asking command questions.
