Latest news with #Sequoia
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Rillet Raises $25M Series A from Sequoia Capital to Bring AI to Mid-market Accounting
The company has quickly become the system of record for the next-generation of finance teams, including those at Windsurf, Decagon, Postscript, and more NEW YORK, May 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Rillet, the AI-native ERP (enterprise resource planning) platform, today announced $25M in Series A funding led by Sequoia Capital. This round, which comes 10 months after Rillet's last fundraise, includes existing investors First Round Capital, Creandum, Susa Ventures and top angels, such as former NetSuite CFO, Ron Gill and Lee Kirkpatrick, former Twilio CFO. Today, many accounting teams are reliant on legacy ERP systems and tools from the 90s, preventing them from fully adopting AI. Products like NetSuite are slow, outdated, highly manual and often bloated and complex from extensive customization. Full utilization of AI requires a single source of truth with clean, accurate data. Rillet has rebuilt the general ledger to redefine the ERP for the AI age. The platform integrates directly with best-in-class tools, including Salesforce, Stripe, Ramp, Brex and Rippling. Rillet AI agents then automate key accounting workflows from accruals to reconciliation to board reporting and more. "We're a team of accountants building for accountants. This means everything from the reports to the workflows is tailor-built for the challenges CFOs and controllers deal with on a daily basis," said Rillet CEO and founder, Nicolas Kopp. Rillet empowers customers to close their books in hours rather than weeks, providing fully reconciled financial data in real time to enable faster and better decision making. Leaders no longer need to wait weeks after the month ends to see how the business is performing. This means that leaner, more efficient accounting teams can then focus on higher leverage, more strategic work. "ERP is one of the largest software categories, yet it has remained virtually untouched for the last decade because reimagining the financial backbone of a business is incredibly complex," said Julien Bek, the Sequoia partner who led the firm's partnership with Rillet. "Nicolas has brought together a world-class team to tackle this challenge, combining deep domain expertise with AI-native technology to rebuild the foundation of the CFO suite." Sequoia, which is known for partnering with category-defining fintechs like Stripe, Block, and more, has several ex-CFO investing partners. Roelof Botha, managing partner at Sequoia and prior CFO of PayPal added: "Rillet has rethought the general ledger to automate accounting with real-time integrations and AI-driven workflows, allowing finance teams to work smarter and businesses to scale faster. This modern approach helps CFOs capture the full value of AI, and, ultimately, positions Rillet as the system of record for the next generation of finance teams." Since launching in 2024, Rillet has seen incredible traction with revenue growing 5x year-on-year and the platform processing billions in transactions. Nearly 200 customers including fast-growing companies like Windsurf, Decagon and Postscript have implemented Rillet to transform their accounting processes. Windsurf, one of the fastest growing AI companies, runs all their accounting on Rillet: "Rillet feels like it was tailor built for Windsurf and our complex accounting needs. We have a unique blend of products and revenue models and are growing at lightning speed; Rillet handles all of it effortlessly," said Windsurf VP of Finance, Adam Strouss. This new funding and support from Sequoia will allow Rillet to further accelerate the development and deployment of AI within the platform and enable them to further build out the go-to-market and customer support functions. View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Rillet
Forbes
2 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Forbes Daily: How Elon Musk's 2024 Political Donations Have Paid Off
A small group of startups like OpenAI, Stripe and SpaceX are commanding massive valuations this year, helping their earliest backers rise in the ranks of Forbes' Midas List. The 24th annual ranking of the world's top venture capitalists, out today, is once again topped by Sequoia investor Alfred Lin. Lin, who made early bets on Airbnb and DoorDash, also benefits from a 2021 investment in OpenAI at a $14 billion valuation (the ChatGPT-maker is currently worth $300 billion). And eight of this year's 15 newcomers join the list due to the surging valuations of startups like SpaceX, Databricks and Anthropic. But with AI's potential to impact nearly every sector, and a handful of startups that appear ready to go public this year, there are sure to be more changes ahead. Photo byElon Musk, the largest individual donor in the 2024 election cycle, said he plans to scale back his political giving. But in just four months, the Trump Administration has already given him plenty of return on his investment. His businesses face less scrutiny, they're positioned to receive billions of dollars in fresh government contracts, and Musk is far richer than he was before he endorsed President Donald Trump, with a net worth of about $419 billion. In his latest change of heart on tariffs, Trump said he would delay his planned 50% tariffs on goods from the European Union to allow for more negotiations, leading to a surge in U.S. stock futures and European markets. Trump said on Truth Social that after receiving a call from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, he agreed to extend the deadline to July 9, and von der Leyen told him trade talks would 'begin rapidly.' Richard White Australian billionaire Richard White's logistics software company WiseTech Global will purchase U.S.-based cloud computing firm E2open for $2.1 billion, in a deal that will help WiseTech increase its customer base. White was ranked seventh on Forbes Asia's most recent list of Australia's 50 richest people, with a net worth of $10.1 billion. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) brushed off concerns about President Donald Trump's alleged business conflicts and recent dinner with top investors in his meme coin, claiming Republicans don't have to investigate the president's business dealings because Trump does everything 'out in the open.' When asked by CNN about Trump's crypto dinner, which has raised concerns about transparency and conflicts of interest, Johnson said he didn't 'know anything' about the dinner, but defended the president as 'one of the greatest dealmakers of all time.' In a post on Truth Social over the weekend, President Donald Trump attacked Russian President Vladimir Putin and criticized Moscow's aerial attacks on Ukrainian cities, signaling his frustration over the stalled peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. In his most direct criticism of Putin's handling of the war, the president criticized the Russian president for 'needlessly killing a lot of people.' Trump also said Sunday that he was 'absolutely' considering fresh sanctions against Russia. Most Southwest Airlines passengers will need to pay to check bags starting this week. Southwest Airlines passengers will have to pay $35 for one checked bag and $45 for a second starting Wednesday, several outlets reported, as the airline ends its long-running free baggage policy. Additionally, Southwest will roll out a new 'basic' fare tier this week—a low-cost, no-frills offering that will replace the airline's current 'Wanna Get Away' tier. Thousands of flights across the U.S. were delayed Monday, as severe thunderstorms in the South, Plains and Mississippi Valley disrupted Memorial Day weekend travel, with the New York Times reporting that more than 1,000 flights in and out of Dallas Fort Worth alone experienced delays. The holiday weekend was the busiest travel period since the TSA began requiring REAL ID for passengers earlier this month. Illustration by Cecilia Runxi Zhang for Forbes; PhotoFederal marijuana reform has come to a halt with President Donald Trump in the White House, and some U.S. cannabis companies are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the EU. While the market there is small, it's expected to grow more quickly than the U.S. cannabis market in the next few years. And while cannabis companies in the U.S. cannot transport products across state lines, EU businesses can grow the crop in one country and export products around the continent. Three people were sentenced to prison over a scheme to defraud the Georgia Department of Labor out of tens of millions of dollars intended to help unemployed individuals during the Covid-19 pandemic. The individuals and their co-conspirators filed over 5,000 fraudulent unemployment insurance claims, resulting in at least $30 million in stolen benefits, according to court documents and evidence. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw After her ambition to become a brewmaster was thwarted, Indian billionaire Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw channeled her frustrations into building an international knockoff drug powerhouse. She's now one of the world's most successful—and richest—female entrepreneurs. Mazumdar-Shaw helped start Biocon, which in 2000 began brewing up pharmaceuticals—starting with insulin. Insulin is one of the simplest 'biologics,' drugs derived from a living source that are increasingly used to treat everything from cancer to immune system disorders. More complicated biologics like gene therapies and monoclonal antibodies are difficult to make—and extremely expensive. It's an enormous market, but exactly how big is impossible to say. Biologics accounted for $324 billion in spending at list prices in 2023, according to health care research firm Iqvia, but that number doesn't account for the significant rebates that branded drugmakers often offer to keep their market share, lowering what insurers and patients pay but obfuscating total costs. Mazumdar-Shaw, now 72, started out in the Indian market but now sells drugs globally—and is increasingly focused on the U.S. and Canada, which represent some 40% of its biologics sales. She realized early that finding a cheaper way to make such complex, life-saving drugs not only made them more accessible but was also good business. Biocon, which is publicly traded in India, brings in $1.9 billion in revenue by selling dozens of generic drugs and 'biosimilar' medications. While Forbes' Self-Made Women list includes only women from the United States, Mazumdar-Shaw would easily make the top 20 were she American, with a fortune that Forbes estimates to be $3.2 billion. WHY IT MATTERS The biggest part of Mazumdar-Shaw's empire is a majority-owned private subsidiary called Biocon Biologics, which focuses on biosimilars and represents nearly 55% of the parent company's revenue. Akin to what generics are for chemically synthesized drugs, these cheaper alternatives mimic biologic drugs. Though biosimilars are much more expensive to make than generics, requiring more than $100 million to develop, they can drastically reduce patient costs. Iqvia estimates biosimilars have saved the U.S. health care system $36 billion at list prices since 2015. MORE This Pharma Company Is Betting Big On A Chinese Ozempic Rival With little faith among investors that the U.S. will be able to rein in its trillion-dollar deficits, Treasury bonds are not the safe haven they used to be. Because of this—as well as the ongoing war in Ukraine—international central bankers are continuing to add to their gold piles, raising the price of the commodity: $4,000 an ounce: The price that Goldman Sachs expects gold to reach in the next two years—a roughly 30% increase from the current price—if the buying binge continues 22 tons: How much gold per month central banks have purchased since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, an increase from 17 tons per month prior to the war 20%: How much China, the world's biggest gold-mining country, aims to grow its gold holdings to as a share of reserves The class of 2025 is graduating into a changing economy: A tightening job market has increased competition for entry-level positions and the rise of AI has hiring managers calling for an emphasis on candidates' humanity. Some of this year's notable commencement speakers have addressed these challenges in their advice to graduates. Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver A.J. Brown, for instance, encouraged students at the University of Mississippi to think of themselves as their own operation: 'Your discipline is your product, your name is your brand, your habits are your investments.' Americans flocked to movie theaters over the holiday weekend, with Disney's live-action 'Lilo & Stitch' and 'Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning' leading the way to an estimated $322 million at the box office. That total beats out the previous Memorial Day weekend record of $314 million in 2013, led by which two blockbuster films? A. 'Despicable Me 2' and 'The Lone Ranger' B. 'Men In Black 3' and 'The Avengers' C. 'Tomorrowland' and 'Pitch Perfect 2' D. 'Fast & Furious 6' and 'The Hangover Part III' Check your answer. Thanks for reading! This edition of Forbes Daily was edited by Sarah Whitmire and Chris Dobstaff.
Business Insider
2 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
Amazon's sprawling warehouse robot factories offer a glimpse into modern US manufacturing
Business Insider recently toured two facilities where Amazon designs and manufactures its robots. Amazon has hundreds of thousands of robots working in its sortation and fulfillment centers. Its facilities give an inside peek at what modern manufacturing looks like. Inside an unassuming office park in North Reading, Massachusetts, Amazon employees are hard at work building robots to support its vast network of fulfillment centers. This facility, along with another about 50 miles away in Westborough, provides a modern view of US manufacturing. President Donald Trump has made his pledge to bring manufacturing back to the US a cornerstone of his administration. But there appears to be a growing appetite for reshoring among company CEOs, a recent annual survey from consulting firm Kearney found. While tariffs and geopolitical tensions provide extra incentive to do so, some obstacles remain, the Kearney analysts wrote. People also aren't necessarily clamoring to work in factories. A poll by the Cato Institute done last year found that while a majority of Americans believed that the US would be better off if more people worked in manufacturing, only a small percentage said they personally want to work on a factory floor. 'A good attitude' and the 'ability to problem solve' The 209,000-square-foot facility in North Reading was previously the home of Kiva Systems before Amazon acquired the mobile robotics company for $775 million in 2012. Elevated platforms look down on an open floor area where robot models named Hercules and Proteus come off a manufacturing line. They have their batteries charged and systems tested, and then file themselves away to be shipped to fulfillment centers in a process Amazon calls a "robot graduation." Both types of robots transport heavy pods of items around Amazon's fulfillment centers, but while Hercules follows a preordained path marked on the floor, Proteus can sense people and humans in its path and make its own decisions about where to go. There are four manufacturing lines in the facility, each with 10 stations. Lights above each station signal green when everything is in place and red when something is wrong. Tye Brady, chief technologist at Amazon Robotics, told Business Insider on a recent visit to the facilities that the company is proud of the fact that it manufactures its robots in Massachusetts. "We know that it can be done and we can do that very efficiently and employ the local workforce," Brady said. A recent Morgan Stanley report estimated that Amazon's investments in robotics could save the company as much as $10 billion a year. Amazon Robotics's facility in Westborough is even larger than the one in North Reading, stretching about 350,000 square feet. In that facility, Amazon workers manufacture robots that can sort, like one called Sequoia that combines several different robotic processes into one storage system. Rows upon rows of cables hang down above containerized robotic storage systems that are testing software updates behind chain-link fences, safely away from human workers. Both the North Reading and Westborough facilities also have corporate offices and research and development labs located directly off the manufacturing floor. Brady said the location is a "competitive advantage" because their engineers and manufacturing employees can work together from the start. "And we've created many, many jobs because of that," he said. Erica McClosky, director of manufacturing and technical operations at Amazon Robotics, said that about 300 people work on the more physical tasks involved in building and maintaining a fleet of robots that's more than 750,000 strong. The majority of workers are assemblers who work on the line itself. Another team is responsible for testing robots before they go out to fulfillment centers and for repairing them when they're experiencing issues. There are also employees who receive and ship out the materials needed to assemble the robots. Amazon sources mechanical parts from local suppliers as well as global ones. These employees typically don't need advanced technical knowledge to do their jobs. "Generally, the requirement for us is a good attitude, ability to problem solve, and be curious," McClosky said. In addition to those employees, about 150 engineers support and assist them. That includes process engineers who work alongside assemblers as they learn how to build a product, as well as test and quality engineers. Technical program managers bring the whole process together. 'There's no doubt that we're seeing jobs change' Brady said Amazon's work is just the beginning of what's possible in "physical AI," a term used to describe the process of bringing AI to robots that can perceive and react to the real world. "When I speak about physical AI, it would be like us talking about the computer in the '50s," he said. "I really foresee the future filled with physical AI systems that enable and augment a person's capability to do their job." He added that the team aims for the robots to be collaborative and always work in concert with humans. The work that happens in Amazon's Massachusetts facilities ultimately plays out in Amazon's sortation and fulfillment centers, where orders are picked, packed, and prepared for delivery. About 75% of the packages that Amazon processes touch at least one of its robotics systems. Julie Mitchell, director of robotic sortation technology at Amazon Robotics, said her design teams get direct feedback from operations teams at fulfillment centers so they know what tasks need to be automated and what may or may not be working. Mitchell and McClosky's overall goal is to optimize manufacturing and design so that robots arriving at a fulfillment center are ready to get to work. "We partner really early on to get their feedback at the very beginning of our designs so that we're always going in the right direction with our technology," Mitchell said. Amazon recently opened a next-generation fulfillment center in Shreveport, Louisiana, with 10 times the number of robots than older fulfillment centers. Brady said that 30% more of the jobs in the Shreveport fulfillment center are more technical in nature than in other locations. "There's no doubt that we're seeing jobs change," Brady said. But rather than have robots replace jobs, Brady said that Amazon is committing significant resources to upskilling its employees. That includes technical apprenticeship programs and paying for some employees' college tuition. "You need both people and machines to work together in order to achieve this task," he said. "If you can blend the best of both worlds — the common sense, the thinking at a higher level, the reasoning, understanding overall building flow, understanding the problems that need to get resolved — and then let the machines do the menial and mundane and repetitive, then you actually have created a more productive system."
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Blues Secures $25 Million in New Funding Led by Sequoia Capital to Accelerate Cloud-Connected Intelligent Products
Sequoia Managing Partner Roelof Botha Joins Blues Board of Directors BOSTON, May 20, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Blues, a leader in Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity solutions, today announced the successful closing of its latest $25 million funding round, led by Sequoia Capital, and that Sequoia Managing Partner Roelof Botha has joined its board of directors. The investment round will support the company's growth, fuel further product innovation, and enable Blues to deliver on its mission to help the world's physical product makers transform their offerings into data-driven intelligent services. Blues solves the biggest challenges associated with IoT connectivity, making it easy to securely cloud-connect any physical product. Companies of all sizes, from established enterprises to emerging startups, are counting on Blues as a key partner in transforming their businesses. Refrigeration manufacturers are adding connectivity and intelligence to track temperature compliance, reduce product loss, and deliver a fully managed service. Logistics providers are connecting forklifts, pallets, and products across warehouses to optimize placement, retrieval, and operational safety. Automotive battery vendors are improving battery life and enabling remote monitoring to reduce long-haul truck idle time, lower diesel consumption, and cut emissions. One of the world's largest suppliers of power grid components is enabling remote control of customer equipment to reduce electric demand during peak energy days and weather events. Customers are leveraging Blues' extensive experience to accelerate the launch of new products and services from idea to impact, with Blues helping them to identify and address the full suite of business challenges involved in transforming their physical products into intelligent services. With Blues' integrated hardware, software, and cloud technologies, companies can easily connect and manage their products wirelessly, unlocking real-time data to improve operations. Blues stands alone as the only IoT provider to support all major wireless standards (2G/3G/4G/5G cellular, Wi-Fi, LoRa, and Satellite) in a single, plug-and-play format with one simple Application Programming Interface (API). Whether enabling seamless fallback across networks or future-proofing devices against sunsets, Blues makes secure, reliable connectivity effortless so that businesses can focus on the value of the insights their devices deliver. With Blues,' companies can easily connect and manage their products wirelessly, and unlock real-time data to improve operations. "We're in an age of intelligent machines. The opportunity to reimagine every physical product around the data they produce, and to improve life and the environment, is staggering," said Ray Ozzie, founder of Blues. "For years we've been working with visionary enterprises looking to transform their businesses toward service delivery. This funding will help us to accelerate our growth so we may address the breadth of this opportunity." Sequoia Capital, known for backing category-defining companies, is excited to deepen their partnership with Blues, which is known for its industry-leading approach to embedded machine intelligence. "Blues enables companies to transform physical products into intelligent, cloud-connected systems that drive operational efficiency and unlock new revenue streams," said Sequoia's Botha. "The team's technical prowess and developer focus, along with a fundamentally lower cost solution, positions Blues at the vanguard of the embedded intelligence revolution." Blues has previously raised $66 million in funding. About Roelof BothaRoelof is Managing Partner and Steward of Sequoia Capital. He has spent over 20 years building companies in Silicon Valley. He began within the walls of nascent PayPal, where he joined in March 2000 while completing his MBA at Stanford. He became CFO in 2001 and led the company through both its IPO in early 2002 and the subsequent acquisition by eBay. Roelof joined Sequoia in 2003 to help founders build enduring businesses. In 2017, he assumed leadership of Sequoia Capital's US/Europe business and became a Steward of the Sequoia Partnership. Roelof is a Director of Block, Ethos, MongoDB, Natera, Pendulum Therapeutics, and Unity Technologies, among others. Previously, he was a Director of companies that include YouTube, Tumblr, Xoom, Eventbrite, and Evernote. He also led Sequoia's investment in Instagram. About Blues Blues is a leader in secure wireless connectivity, helping organizations to transform their physical products and businesses to be centered on data and the delivery of data-fueled intelligent services. With customers across transportation, health care, energy, and logistics in North America, Central America and Europe, Blues is on a mission to empower innovation by making cloud-connected machine intelligence possible for organizations of any size. With Blues, customers can easily and securely provision and communicate with any physical product, anywhere, enabling new sources of revenue and new customer experiences while also reducing costs. Blues solves the biggest challenges associated with wireless connectivity, making it easy to securely cloud-connect any physical product at scale. Thousands of organizations worldwide, from non-profits to startups to enterprises, connect their devices with Blues integrated hardware, software, and cloud services. For more information about Blues and its wireless connectivity solutions, visit and follow Blues on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and X. 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Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
2026 Toyota TRD Pro Models Add a Splash of Color
Toyota TRD Pro models are getting a new, special shade of blue dubbed Wave Maker for 2026. This new finish is available on TRD Pro 4Runner and Sequoia SUVs and Tacoma and Tundra pickups. This is the eleventh TRD Pro special color to join the company's color wheel since 2015. If you're tired of muted silvers covering your car, Toyota has an answer. Well, at least in its top-tier TRD Pro versions you'll be able to snag the new 'Wave Maker' finish. This new shade is the 11th addition to the special list of TRD paints and is scheduled to hit 4Runner, Tacoma, Tundra, and Sequoia models this fall. Toyota says this finish was developed by Toyota's CALTY design team. This is the same group responsible for other TRD Pro exclusive colors like the more muted mud bath finish for 2025 models, and the terra finish from 2024. Now, this new paint is obviously limited to just a handful of trim models in an already limited portfolio. That means you're out of luck if you want a more price-friendly version of Toyota's latest body-on-frame machines in this new color. However, if you look at the trend of these limited colors, you might be in luck down the line as the colors move down the trim walk. If you do plan on adding a new TRD Pro 4Runner, Tacoma, Tundra, or Sequoia finished in wave maker, you'll have to wait until the 2026 model year comes around this fall. Toyota hasn't yet released pricing for the '26 model TRD Pros, but stickers should be close to the current $65,230 price admission into a Tacoma TRD Pro, which is the most affordable TRD Pro variant currently sold. Do you think there should be more vibrant colors like this on cars? Tell us your thoughts below.
