Latest news with #taxresearch
Yahoo
05-08-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Blue J secures $122m Series D funding for AI tax platform
Blue J, a generative AI (genAI) tax research platform, has raised $122m (C$168.26m) in a Series D funding round led by Oak HC/FT and Sapphire Ventures. The funding round also included participation from Intrepid Growth Partners and previous investors Ten Coves Capital and It will be used to support Blue J's efforts to expand its team, enhance product development and increase market reach. Blue J's platform uses genAI to provide answers to complex tax questions across US federal, state and local tax, as well as Canadian and UK tax law. Built on a curated database of authoritative tax law, Blue J's system improves by learning from millions of user queries each year. Blue J CEO and co-founder Benjamin Alarie said: 'We are thrilled to partner with Sapphire Ventures, Oak HC/FT, Ten Coves, and Intrepid Growth Partners – firms with exceptional track records of backing market-defining companies. 'Their commitment is a powerful endorsement of our vision to transform tax research. With this capital and industry support, we will accelerate innovation and deliver even greater value to tax professionals. We are building the future of tax. This is just the beginning.' Blue J's interface is designed to allow users to ask tax questions conversationally, without the need for complex syntax. The platform delivers answers with relevant source citations. Oak HC/FT partner Allen Miller said: 'Tax research has long been a cumbersome, time-consuming task. Blue J has solved this challenge with an elegant AI solution that dramatically accelerates research while raising the bar for accuracy. 'We believe Blue J will become the new standard for complex tax questions – and we are proud to support Ben and the team in their next stage of growth.' Blue J said that its revenue and customer base more than doubled in the first half of 2025. The Series D round follows Blue J's December 2024 Series C. Since January 2025, Blue J has grown to over 80 employees and more than doubled its rate of new customer acquisition, the company said. Earlier this year, collaborated with Blue J to provide companies of all sizes with access to an AI-powered tax research solution. "Blue J secures $122m Series D funding for AI tax platform " was originally created and published by International Accounting Bulletin, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site. Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
National Post
04-08-2025
- Business
- National Post
Blue J Announces $122M Series D Financing Led By Oak HC/FT and Sapphire Ventures
Article content Blue J doubles revenue and customer base in first half of 2025, delivering comprehensive tax research to tens of thousands of tax professionals Article content TORONTO — Blue J, a leading GenAI tax research platform, today announced it has raised $122 million in U.S. dollars in a Series D funding round led by Oak HC/FT and Sapphire Ventures, with participation from Intrepid Growth Partners, and previous investors Ten Coves Capital and Coming seven months after Blue J's Series C round, this investment signals a clear market consensus that Blue J is the breakout winner in its category. Article content Article content 'We're thrilled to partner with Sapphire Ventures, Oak HC/FT, Ten Coves, and Intrepid Growth Partners — firms with exceptional track records of backing market-defining companies,' said Benjamin Alarie, CEO and co-founder of Blue J. 'Their commitment is a powerful endorsement of our vision to transform tax research. With this capital and industry support, we will accelerate innovation and deliver even greater value to tax professionals. We are building the future of tax. This is just the beginning.' Article content 'Tax research has long been a cumbersome, time-consuming task,' said Allen Miller, Partner at Oak HC/FT. 'Blue J has solved this challenge with an elegant AI solution that dramatically accelerates research while raising the bar for accuracy. We believe Blue J will become the new standard for complex tax questions — and we're proud to support Ben and the team in their next stage of growth.' Article content 'Blue J is exactly what we look for in vertical AI: deep domain expertise, proprietary data and a product that drives meaningful business impact,' said Cathy Gao, Partner at Sapphire Ventures and Blue J's newest board member. 'By applying generative AI to decades of tax rulings, Blue J reduces research that once took hours to just minutes. It's already trusted by enterprise clients, embraced by top firms, and loved by many practitioners. We believe their momentum shows the industry is ready, and we're proud to back Blue J as they build the operating layer for global tax cognition.' Article content Blue J's platform leverages advanced generative AI to deliver instant, reliable answers to complex tax questions spanning U.S. federal, state, and local tax (SALT), as well as Canadian and UK tax law. Built on a rigorously curated database of authoritative tax law, Blue J's system continuously improves by learning from millions of user queries each year. The result: practitioners can navigate even the most challenging tax issues with unmatched confidence and speed. Article content Unlike legacy keyword-based research tools, Blue J lets users ask tax questions conversationally, with no arcane syntax required. The intuitive interface delivers answers in seconds, complete with relevant source citations, making Blue J the industry's most user-friendly tax research platform. More than 70% of users log in weekly, and Blue J's Net Promoter Score (NPS) is consistently in the mid-70s. Article content In the first half of 2025, the company more than doubled its revenue and customer base, now serving tens of thousands of tax professionals across thousands of organizations that rely on Blue J for authoritative tax research, analysis, and answers. With the Series D funding, Blue J will further accelerate team expansion, product development, and market reach. Article content The company has proudly earned recognition from other generative AI leaders. 'Blue J is a leading example of effective AI deployment in one of the most complex information domains,' said Marc Manara, Head of Startups at OpenAI. 'By leveraging OpenAI's latest models, Blue J has elevated the standard for accuracy, trust, and insight in tax research. We're excited to continue working together at the forefront of innovation.' Article content This Series D follows Blue J's December 2024 Series C and comes during a period of rapid acceleration for the company. Since January 2025, Blue J has grown to over 80 employees and more than doubled its rate of new customer acquisition. With this new investment and market momentum, Blue J is poised to set the new standard for AI-driven tax research as global tax complexity continues to rise. Article content About Blue J Article content Founded in 2015, Blue J is redefining tax research with generative AI. Trusted by tax professionals across accounting firms, law firms, corporations, and government, Blue J delivers fast, verifiable analysis and answers to even the most complex tax questions — empowering experts to serve with clarity and confidence. With an intuitive conversational interface and a rigorously curated library of authoritative sources, Blue J is transforming how tax professionals work and make decisions. Leading organizations trust Blue J to streamline their research workflow and enhance decision-making accuracy. For more information, visit Article content About Oak HC/FT Article content Oak HC/FT is a venture and growth equity firm specializing in investments in fintech and healthcare. Using partnership as a foundation, Oak HC/FT guides companies and founders at every stage, from seed to growth, to create businesses that make a measurable and lasting impact. Founded in 2014, Oak HC/FT has invested in over 105 portfolio companies and has over $5.3 billion in assets under management. Oak HC/FT is headquartered in Stamford, CT, with an office in San Francisco, CA. Follow Oak HC/FT on LinkedIn and X and learn more at Article content About Sapphire Article content Sapphire is a global software venture capital firm with over $11 billion in AUM and team members across Austin, London, Menlo Park and San Francisco. For more than two decades, Sapphire has partnered with visionary management teams and venture funds to back companies of consequence. Since its founding, Sapphire has invested in more than 170 companies globally resulting in more than 30 Public Listings and 45 acquisitions. The firm's investment strategies — Sapphire Ventures, Sapphire Partners and Sapphire Sport — are focused on scaling companies and venture funds, elevating them to become category leaders. Sapphire's Portfolio Growth team of experienced operators delivers a strategic blend of value-add services, tools and resources designed to support portfolio company leaders as they scale. Article content Article content Article content Article content Article content Contacts Article content Media Contacts: Article content Blue J Article content Article content Article content
Yahoo
04-08-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Blue J Announces $122M Series D Financing Led By Oak HC/FT and Sapphire Ventures
Blue J doubles revenue and customer base in first half of 2025, delivering comprehensive tax research to tens of thousands of tax professionals TORONTO, August 04, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Blue J, a leading GenAI tax research platform, today announced it has raised $122 million in U.S. dollars in a Series D funding round led by Oak HC/FT and Sapphire Ventures, with participation from Intrepid Growth Partners, and previous investors Ten Coves Capital and Coming seven months after Blue J's Series C round, this investment signals a clear market consensus that Blue J is the breakout winner in its category. "We're thrilled to partner with Sapphire Ventures, Oak HC/FT, Ten Coves, and Intrepid Growth Partners — firms with exceptional track records of backing market-defining companies," said Benjamin Alarie, CEO and co-founder of Blue J. "Their commitment is a powerful endorsement of our vision to transform tax research. With this capital and industry support, we will accelerate innovation and deliver even greater value to tax professionals. We are building the future of tax. This is just the beginning." "Tax research has long been a cumbersome, time-consuming task," said Allen Miller, Partner at Oak HC/FT. "Blue J has solved this challenge with an elegant AI solution that dramatically accelerates research while raising the bar for accuracy. We believe Blue J will become the new standard for complex tax questions — and we're proud to support Ben and the team in their next stage of growth." "Blue J is exactly what we look for in vertical AI: deep domain expertise, proprietary data and a product that drives meaningful business impact," said Cathy Gao, Partner at Sapphire Ventures and Blue J's newest board member. "By applying generative AI to decades of tax rulings, Blue J reduces research that once took hours to just minutes. It's already trusted by enterprise clients, embraced by top firms, and loved by many practitioners. We believe their momentum shows the industry is ready, and we're proud to back Blue J as they build the operating layer for global tax cognition." Blue J's platform leverages advanced generative AI to deliver instant, reliable answers to complex tax questions spanning U.S. federal, state, and local tax (SALT), as well as Canadian and UK tax law. Built on a rigorously curated database of authoritative tax law, Blue J's system continuously improves by learning from millions of user queries each year. The result: practitioners can navigate even the most challenging tax issues with unmatched confidence and speed. Unlike legacy keyword-based research tools, Blue J lets users ask tax questions conversationally, with no arcane syntax required. The intuitive interface delivers answers in seconds, complete with relevant source citations, making Blue J the industry's most user-friendly tax research platform. More than 70% of users log in weekly, and Blue J's Net Promoter Score (NPS) is consistently in the mid-70s. In the first half of 2025, the company more than doubled its revenue and customer base, now serving tens of thousands of tax professionals across thousands of organizations that rely on Blue J for authoritative tax research, analysis, and answers. With the Series D funding, Blue J will further accelerate team expansion, product development, and market reach. The company has proudly earned recognition from other generative AI leaders. "Blue J is a leading example of effective AI deployment in one of the most complex information domains," said Marc Manara, Head of Startups at OpenAI. "By leveraging OpenAI's latest models, Blue J has elevated the standard for accuracy, trust, and insight in tax research. We're excited to continue working together at the forefront of innovation." This Series D follows Blue J's December 2024 Series C and comes during a period of rapid acceleration for the company. Since January 2025, Blue J has grown to over 80 employees and more than doubled its rate of new customer acquisition. With this new investment and market momentum, Blue J is poised to set the new standard for AI-driven tax research as global tax complexity continues to rise. About Blue J Founded in 2015, Blue J is redefining tax research with generative AI. Trusted by tax professionals across accounting firms, law firms, corporations, and government, Blue J delivers fast, verifiable analysis and answers to even the most complex tax questions — empowering experts to serve with clarity and confidence. With an intuitive conversational interface and a rigorously curated library of authoritative sources, Blue J is transforming how tax professionals work and make decisions. Leading organizations trust Blue J to streamline their research workflow and enhance decision-making accuracy. For more information, visit About Oak HC/FT Oak HC/FT is a venture and growth equity firm specializing in investments in fintech and healthcare. Using partnership as a foundation, Oak HC/FT guides companies and founders at every stage, from seed to growth, to create businesses that make a measurable and lasting impact. Founded in 2014, Oak HC/FT has invested in over 105 portfolio companies and has over $5.3 billion in assets under management. Oak HC/FT is headquartered in Stamford, CT, with an office in San Francisco, CA. Follow Oak HC/FT on LinkedIn and X and learn more at About Sapphire Sapphire is a global software venture capital firm with over $11 billion in AUM and team members across Austin, London, Menlo Park and San Francisco. For more than two decades, Sapphire has partnered with visionary management teams and venture funds to back companies of consequence. Since its founding, Sapphire has invested in more than 170 companies globally resulting in more than 30 Public Listings and 45 acquisitions. The firm's investment strategies — Sapphire Ventures, Sapphire Partners and Sapphire Sport — are focused on scaling companies and venture funds, elevating them to become category leaders. Sapphire's Portfolio Growth team of experienced operators delivers a strategic blend of value-add services, tools and resources designed to support portfolio company leaders as they scale. View source version on Contacts Media Contacts: Blue J Holland Eichornbluej@
Yahoo
17-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Consumption-oriented taxes are a better option than those on labour or potentially robots
I was having dinner with three of my best friends a few years ago when one of them pulled out his phone to show us the just-released ChatGPT, the large language model artificial intelligence application. It was amazing. All of our jaws dropped. 'And this is just the beginning,' he said. He was bang on. The rapid pace of AI applications is truly astonishing. Since that day in November 2022, I have been very interested in how AI can help me become more efficient in my work — and it has. Accessing quick answers to difficult questions, using it as a search engine replacement and coming up with ideas have been game-changing. In the professional realm, I routinely use AI applications such as Ask Blue J to help with my tax research. ChatGPT, Ask Blue J, Grok and others have transformed how I conduct tax research and they're very good overall on the accuracy scale — not perfect, but very good. I often get asked if AI will replace tax advisers such as me. My usual answer is a qualified 'no.' AI has, to date, made my job more efficient, but experience and empathy still count for something. But we're not very far away from AI replacing human beings for repetitive tasks such as bookkeeping and preparing financial statements. Ditto for tax administration. It is conceivable that a lot of the assessment functions, audits, reassessments, collection matters and other routine Canada Revenue Agency functions could be replaced by AI at some point soon. Yes, I'm aware of the data risks. From an overall jobs perspective, as in the tax realm, AI will likely replace repetitive jobs. For example, have you seen Tesla Inc.'s Optimus robots that are in the testing phase? Truly amazing technology. Will the job losses triggered by AI result in a shifting of jobs to where human beings are truly needed (such as personal or health care) rather than a permanent loss? Of course, the pace and permanence of these losses remain unknown, but economic history leans toward reallocation over obliteration. What does the proliferation of AI mean from a tax policy perspective for our country? Well, like most countries, Canada heavily relies on taxing the labour of our residents. Of the $459.5 billion that our federal government collected in revenues in 2023-24, $217.7 billion — 47.4 per cent — was from personal income taxes. Historically, wages and salaries account for about 60 per cent of personal income tax revenue. Accordingly, if AI were to significantly erode that 60 per cent of taxation revenue, the government could lose billions. For example, if AI takes the job of a factory worker who earns, say, $80,000, there is less personal tax revenue for the government if that job loss is permanent. If that worker finds a similar-paying job in another industry, then there's no net loss in taxation revenues. Some, however, are convinced that the job losses will be permanent. If so, then the taxation revenues will also be permanently reduced. Bill Gates and other left-of-centre thinkers have advocated that if such job losses are permanent, then some form of 'robot tax' needs to be introduced in order to replace the lost taxation receipts. The concept is interesting, but I struggle to see how such a concept is practical. A country is going to tax the productivity gains resulting from replacing a human being? Not sure how you would track that. Instead, this issue should be part of an overall broader tax reform. If countries such as Canada have the potential to experience significant job losses — and reduced taxation receipts — as a result of AI efficiencies, then this is an opportunity to think big about how we want our future tax system to look, especially since our tax system is in dire need of reform to begin with. Perhaps this is the opportunity to shift away from our heavy reliance on taxing labour and personal income and move more heavily towards consumption taxes such as the GST/HST. Economist Jack Mintz has long advocated for a greater role for consumption taxes. An income tax penalizes earnings and savings, but a consumption tax only kicks in when money is spent, which encourages investment and growth. A well-designed consumption tax, such as the GST, applies across the economy, which includes human workers, robots, corporations and individuals, and since it taxes output, not inputs, there is no need to distinguish between AI's productivity and a human's. Since our GST also applies broadly to a large variety of goods and services, apart from the necessities of life such as food, clothing, most homes, health care and education, and offers credits to low-income Canadians, it is fairer with the regressiveness significantly reduced. A well-designed consumption tax is also simpler to administer, resulting in better efficiencies. A simpler tax system means fewer barriers for success and provides competitive advantages. Do we need a robot tax? Nope. Instead, we need to stop punishing people for working hard. The proliferation of AI is a significant wake-up call to make bold and positive reforms that modernize the tax base so that it's fit for the 21st century and beyond. Less reliance on taxing labour and a shift to relying more on a consumption tax would be a great proactive move, resulting in better neutrality and efficiency. A 1% tax cut isn't tax reform Growing government expenditures mean more taxes AI certainly has the ability to greatly impact our country's finances. Accordingly, let's not waste this moment to finally build a tax system that's fair, simple, sustainable and built to last. If AI ends up replacing us all, well, I just hope it picks up the tab the next time I'm at dinner with my friends — with an increased consumption tax. Kim Moody, FCPA, FCA, TEP, is the founder of Moodys Tax/Moodys Private Client, a former chair of the Canadian Tax Foundation, former chair of the Society of Estate Practitioners (Canada) and has held many other leadership positions in the Canadian tax community. He can be reached at kgcm@ and his LinkedIn profile is _____________________________________________________________ If you like this story, sign up for the FP Investor Newsletter. _____________________________________________________________
