• The startup Nominal raised $20 million to turbocharge financial planning with agentic AI.
• The serial founders sold their last AI startup for $70 million.
• As the number of people becoming accountants declines, AI startups are trying to address that.

Nominal, a New York-based startup seeking to turbocharge financial planning with agentic AI, raised $20 million last month.

The AI startup is arriving at an opportune moment as the number of people becoming Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) is on the decline.

Cofounder and CEO Guy Leibovitz shared the pitch deck the team used to close its Series A. The deck showed how Nominal would use AI to address the accountant shortage and handle manual accounting labor, as the majority of accountants approach retirement and fewer people take the CPA exam.

Nominal's new round brings its total funding to $30 million. Next47 led the round, which included participation from Workday Ventures, Bling Capital, and Hyperwise Ventures. The company declined to share its valuation.

Leibovitz and Nominal's cofounder and CTO, Golan Kopichinsky, previously built another AI startup together in data security, Cognigo, which sold to NetApp for $70 million in 2019.

After the acquisition, Leibovitz saw firsthand much of the manual work NetApp's finance teams struggled with, which inspired the creation of Nominal.

Leibovitz likened Nominal to a hot $5 billion legal tech startup by calling it "Harvey for accountants and finance teams." Nominal plugs into a company's existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and helps CFOs and controllers automate tasks to reduce manual work and errors.

The company said its product can analyze financial forecasts, reconcile balance sheets, and more.

Nominal makes money by selling annual subscriptions based on usage, and Leibovitz said revenue doubled every quarter last year. Funding will go to expanding operations in North America and adding more AI agents to the product.

Nominal has 40 employees, Leibovitz said, and it has dozens of customers, including auto shop chain Jiffy Lube and business travel company GoGlobal.

Nominal isn't alone in disrupting ERP systems with AI. Earlier this month, AI startup Rillet announced it raised $70 million from Andreessen Horowitz and ICONIQ, while Campfire announced a $35 million Series A raise led by Accel in June.

Here's a look at the pitch deck Nominal used to raise its $20 million Series A. Certain slides have been edited and removed so that the deck can be shared publicly.