Dive Brief:
- Finance software provider Datarails said Wednesday that it raised $70 million in Series C funding as the company looks to expand its geographic footprint and portfolio of products.
- Alongside the funding, the company also announced the roll out of new artificial intelligence agents, with more tools set to launch later this year.
- “AI is the great equalizer for finance teams, which is why we've been working to make it the foundation of the CFO's Office, rather than just a feature,” Didi Gurfinkel, CEO and co-founder of Datarails, said in a press release.
Dive Insight:
New York-headquartered Datarails is one of many vendors competing in the increasingly crowded “office of the CFO software market,” which is expected to grow from $71 billion in 2023 to $131 billion in 2028, according to global investment bank Carlsquare.
OneStream, a larger player in the market, announced earlier this month that it agreed to be acquired by Hg, an investor in software and data businesses, for $6.4 billion.
Datarails said its new influx of cash will be used in part to accelerate its geographic expansion across North America and elsewhere, further increase investment in research and development, and “open up the possibility” of acquiring other players in the sector in the coming months.
The investment, which brings Datarails' total funding to $175 million, was led by One Peak, a specialist growth equity investor. It comes after the company saw 70% year-over-year revenue growth last year, with its team nearly doubling to over 400 employees, according to the Wednesday release.
Datarails indicated that its suite of software tools is quickly evolving from one heavily focused on financial planning and analysis to a “complete finance platform.” More than 50% of the company's growth in 2025 came from products launched in the past 12 months, including a month-end close tool and a cash management offering.
As part of Wednesday’s announcement, the company said it was adding three new products — strategy, planning and reporting AI finance agents — to the mix. The new tools allow finance professionals to ask questions and “instantly generate board-ready PowerPoint slides, PDF, and Excel files,” assisting in areas such as profitability analysis and predictive forecasting, according to the release.
Products slated for release later this year include “AI in Excel” as well as “Spend Control,” a tool designed to streamline spending management, according to a company spokesperson.
Datarails is looking to differentiate itself from competitors with a strategy that centers around making AI the foundation of the CFO's office, while enabling continued use of Excel, viewed by the startup as the “core software of choice” for finance teams.
In early 2025, the Association for Financial Professionals published a report saying that spreadsheets remained the dominant tool for FP&A professionals, with 96% of survey respondents using them for planning, 93% using them for reporting purposes on a daily or weekly basis, and all using them on at least a quarterly basis.
A Datarails study released in December found that 84% of finance professionals expect Excel to remain a key part of their workflows in the next 10 years, despite advancements in AI.
Datarails said in its Wednesday release that it aims to help finance teams “maintain the familiarity and flexibility of Excel, while ending the pain of piecing together fragmented financial data, freeing them to drive strategic decisions instead.”
An October blog post from OneStream highlighted the challenges of relying on Excel, while also acknowledging its current importance in the office of the CFO, referring to spreadsheets as the “Swiss army knife of finance.”
OneStream announced in November that it entered into an alliance with Microsoft allowing it to incorporate AI agents into the “most widely used” Microsoft products, including Excel.
