In this interview from theCUBE + NYSE Wired: Mixture of Experts, Nicolas Kopp, founder and chief executive officer of Rillet, joins theCUBE's John Furrier to discuss how AI-native ERP is displacing legacy financial systems for fast-growing mid-market companies. Kopp explains why building in a compliance-heavy domain demands a combination of highly deterministic, well-structured data and agentic workflows — and how that mix powers automated close work, accruals prediction and revenue recognition. He details how customers are cutting month-end close times from 10 days to a single business day, with finance teams of two managing companies scaling from $50 million to $100 million in ARR.
The conversation also explores Rillet's momentum and strategy, including more than $100 million raised across two rounds from Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz and ICONIQ after doubling ARR in just 12 weeks. Kopp outlines an agent-based pricing model that lets customers buy AI workflows the way they would hire humans, pointing to a rolling 13-week cash flow forecast agent as one concrete example. He shares a vision where CFOs and controllers become orchestrators of agentic systems, with ERP platforms generating financial statements in near real-time alongside continuous audit capabilities and SOX-compliant guardrails. From eliminating the pain of six-month legacy ERP implementations to repositioning accounting as a strategic revenue driver, Kopp makes the case that AI-native finance platforms do not just accelerate existing workflows — they fundamentally change how companies operate at speed.
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Nicolas Kopp, Rillet
Exploring the Advancements and Challenges in AI Agent Deployment
John Nay, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Norm Ai, joins theCUBE's special presentation with NYSE Wired, focusing on the upcoming Artificial Intelligence Agent Conference 2025. Hosted by John Furrier, co-founder and co-Chief Executive Officer of SiliconANGLE Media, this insightful discussion covers the pivotal developments in AI infrastructure and the regulatory complexities faced by enterprises.
In this episode, Nay shares their expertise in regulatory AI infrastructure, particularly as it pertains to AI agent deployment in highly regulated sectors. The conversation, hosted by Furrier, delves into the evolving landscape of AI technology, compliance challenges, and the strategic initiatives underway at Norm Ai to address the pressing issues surrounding AI deployment. The discussion provides valuable insights for both technology and policy influencers.
Key takeaways from the discussion include the emphasis on the need for dynamic, real-time compliance frameworks that align with regulatory standards, as emphasized by Nay. Furthermore, the episode highlights how enterprises can leverage existing compliance structures to integrate AI technologies more effectively, offering a glimpse into the future of AI agent scalability and regulation. The conversation underscores the importance of bridging the gap between engineering, policy, and technology for sustainable AI innovation.
In this interview from theCUBE + NYSE Wired: Mixture of Experts, Nicolas Kopp, founder and chief executive officer of Rillet, joins theCUBE's John Furrier to discuss how AI-native ERP is displacing legacy financial systems for fast-growing mid-market companies. Kopp explains why building in a compliance-heavy domain demands a combination of highly deterministic, well-structured data and agentic workflows — and how that mix powers automated close work, accruals prediction and revenue recognition. He details how customers are cutting month-end close times from ...Read more
exploreKeep Exploring
When was the company founded, and what is its origin story — the timeline, key steps, and work that led it to its current position?add
What are the primary benefits or priorities for accounting and finance teams when adopting AI-driven tools?add
What is the "holy grail" for accounting and finance teams that enables them to move at the operating speed of the company, particularly during spinoffs, divestitures, joint ventures, or other rapid corporate changes?add
Who is your ERP solution intended for?add
How do you envision agents being used within Rillet, among your customers, and across the broader industry?add
>> Welcome back everyone. I'm John Furrier, host of TheCUBE here at theCUBE's NYSE studio. Of course, we have our Palo Alto studio connecting Silicon Valley and Wall Street. The innovation with agents, the innovation with AI is changing the impact of software as it becomes infused in everything AI is becoming for all departments, all verticals, we're seeing that change out. This is our Mixture of Expert series. Also, a preview of the AI Agent conference.com event in May at the Hilton. Simon Chan, small communities growing into a large. Thousands of people showing up. Of course, that's the rise of the internet of agents and it's impacting all software estates, modern legacy, old legacy, now the new modern AI native. We have Nicolas Kopp here. He's the founder and CEO of Rillet, an innovative company who's actually bringing high performance software that was once designed for large enterprises down to mid-market, small growing businesses. A great category. A lot of wins. Nicolas, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Appreciate it. Thanks for coming on.>> Love being here. Great to see you, John.
John Furrier
>> Love the swag. You got the branding, looking good.>> Always, yep.
John Furrier
>> You guys, I think, encapsulate to me a couple things. One, your success has been well documented, I've been following you on the Females in Finance, an influential group here in New York City, where CFOs and operators talk to each other. You guys are part of the conversation because a lot of people are switching off say, NetSuite. Companies are growing super fast in the small, medium size because those are the ones that win with AI, so past 20 million in revenue. You hit a threshold of financial management, but you don't have the huge budgets. They want efficiency. They want all that stuff done, automation. You guys are hitting that. So I think you're a template for what a modern company looks like in the AI era because you solve a hard problem, with workflows, with software. Old tooling becomes new tooling, becomes automated, easy to use. This is what you guys do.>> No, so for context, we're building an AI native ERP. The ERP has a really stodgy, old school connotation. It evokes a emotional reaction that's often negative, frankly. Everybody has their battle scars from it.
John Furrier
>> Spend $5 million to get fancy pay stubs.>> Exactly.
John Furrier
>> That's what we used to joke.>> Yeah, that still doesn't work. It's definitely a new age for that category. We are bringing people from the QuickBooks and Xeros of the world, the smaller, very fast growing AI companies that we have on the platform, all the way to larger businesses that we take directly off of NetSuite, Workday, or even Oracle Fusion onto our platform, and it's been phenomenal to see the rise of this phenomenon where accounting and finance and AI. It's an inspiring time to be alive in that area again, which it didn't have a lot of change in the last 20 years.
John Furrier
>> Your success also puts me in a little bit of a counter position because on one hand, I've been really critical of the SaaS-pocalypse narrative, which is vibe code the next ERP and the next Salesforce. At the same time, I believe that there will be an AI replacement of a lot of the stodgy, slow moving laggards. It's a speed game. Talk about that, because there's a lot of work to do this. You can't just vibe code, or you can't just use Claude and replicate Oracle Fusion and then sell it. You need distribution. You got to do the work.>> Yep.
John Furrier
>> You guys, when were you founded? Take us through the origination, the time, and the work that you guys have done to get here.>> Yeah, I know. I love to share our story. We're around for four and a half years. Launched to market only a little over one and a half years ago, so really taking the market here by Storm in a very short period of time. If you build an AI native product in such a highly regulated, compliance heavy space like accounting and finance, it's really important that you combine really the best of both worlds of agents, all the advancements in the LLMs, I can talk about some of the use cases that we see there that are phenomenal, with highly deterministic, well-labeled, well-structured data. And that's I think the beauty or where the magic comes in with our current momentum that we have is we have this highly deterministic data structure, very well organized, well structured, well integrated data set that then powers agents on top of that and around it to help do accounting work, close work, help predict accruals, help run revenue recognition all around basically, that data structure. So the best of both worlds is the secret mix, I think for
John Furrier
>> And I like how you frame that because if you look at a fast growing business. Let's just say you get an AI company or a startup and they hit 20 million and then they start going escape velocity. They hit the curve on exponential growth. They were using QuickBooks as a system of record for all their accounting, and then you get tool sprawl. They're not even bolted on. They're just like siloed. That also matches a lot of the challenges on the enterprise side where you have siloed data sets. So the structured systems of record need to be connected systematically with a glue layer and tools. And you could have many tools. With agents, you can have a workforce. I mean, you can basically have an accounting department with agents. It's like, "Hey, what's your budget?" "Well, I had five agents working for me, a new hire." Give them three agents. I mean, this is where we're going.>> No, definitely. If you look at our pricing model today, if you look at some of the legacy tools, I'll skip some of the names, but everybody knows who they are. It's long list prices. You get a PDF of five pages with discounts and 100 numbers for advanced customer support and bunch of modules and here's 10 users there and five users here. We simplified all of that into simple platform fees. And then to your point, the way people can grow with us over time as we have companies that are approaching a billionaire or plus, they can buy as if they were hiring humans. So you could hire an accruals analyst for 100K in three months or you buy a Rillet agent that does the same work and get it live in 90 seconds. Obviously we have a bit of way to go there to really fully end to end replace that human, but take it-
John Furrier
>> All right, Nicolas, take us through on both. Because I think both are good use cases, high end enterprise complexity, growing company that needs to modernize and just reset. Work down, I call it accounting financials, software debt. Because they cobble, by necessity, did that. What's the old way, new way picture look like? Before Rillet, after Rillet, some of the pain points. What went away, what were the key use cases? What was the progression?>> Yep, great. For us, it's mainly two things. It's a game of speed, how you mentioned speed in the era of AI is everything, also when it comes to accounting and finance, as well as data quality and how are you going to aid strategic decision making as a finance department for you at a company? On a point of speed and speed of execution, we have people reducing their close times from what used to be maybe 10 days at month end, literally down ... I get texts from some of our customers at 1:35 PM PT. "I closed my books for basically the month on the first business day." So that's the-
John Furrier
>> Magic.>> .
John Furrier
>> That's magical in their world.>> Yeah, in their world, that is magical and it translates to two things. Speed of reporting and getting the numbers for management and also the ability to keep your teams lean. We have companies growing from 50 to 100 million ARR, for example, on a finance team of two people. That's a head of finance and a controller. Just keeping teams flat, getting these numbers quickly is one operational value proposition. And then more strategically, all the key financial information has accounting somewhere rooted at the heart of the calculations. Having financial information that is shareable, reportable, maybe by Claude MCP or other tools, into the wider organization is very powerful to make decisions quickly. And again, this era of AI where speed is everything.
John Furrier
>> I was having a conversation here last week with the CFO of IBM, Jim Kavanaugh, who was credited for the turnaround for IBM. And one of the things, he's really right on this point, is that the modern CFO is very much ingrained in transformational operations. You're a transformational platform.>> Yep.
John Furrier
>> Clearly. What's interesting is that his number one insight, at least from my takeaway was, and he actually said this, but is, "How do I deploy the capital?" So let's just take that growing company or that transitional company that's transforming, the complexity of the business doesn't get simpler. I add a new division, a new product line, new GM. I got a P&L. Now, I have all that data, but now I want to automate. Here's the credit, there's a split. These are accounting terms, but to illustrate the point is that, that's manual work. Take us through the automation piece, because I could see that as being a major win out of the gate, simplicity and real agility in mapping the financial strategy and reporting to the acute business objectives on strategy, allocation of capital. Am I getting this right?>> Yep.
John Furrier
>> Take me through that, because I think that is the holy grail.>> Yep. No, 100%. Having an ability to have your basic accounting finance team move at the operating speed of the overall company's is critical. What are examples there? We work a lot with private equity, spinoff, divestitures, new joint ventures. There's a lot of corporate change that happens by, it's basically baked into the DNA of these funds and how they operate and make money. So being able to spin up a new entity in literally two to three weeks versus what used to be the old age of maybe six months of uncertainty around financial information.
John Furrier
>> Yeah, and by the way, the staffing requirements alone. Hire a consultant. Train them up. And then human error too, by the way.>> Huge. You can do that again on the human side, especially also with some of the AI workflows that we have just can allocate, for example, costs between divisions or product lines or multiple entities. All these use cases that sound maybe simple to a layman is really the bane of the existence for these finance teams going through these transformations. Do that quickly and accurately, is honestly, is a game changer for companies.
John Furrier
>> All right. Take us through some of the momentum. Give some stats on the business side, what you're thinking about the business. Obviously, you're mid-market because they're underserved. I imagine there's a wide beachhead of opportunity for you because you're horizontal.>> Yep.
John Furrier
>> But all these transformative technology platforms usually start with the underserved.>> Yep.
John Furrier
>> Right?>> Exactly.
John Furrier
>> And they don't have budget, but they're growing, they got to be agile. Take us through your momentum, your strategy.>> No, for us, first of all, and I think John, you'll empathize, building an ERP is really hard and you really got to get it right from a numbers perspective. So for us, we try to focus as much as we possibly can. So we really started with technology companies, AI companies, that are growing quickly. Nobody has time for a half a year implementation and a clunky system afterwards with two system admins. It's just not a thing. And so really it is just the best solution for a fast growing AI companies out there. We power some of the best and brightest, like Mercors, WinServes and LangChains, a long list of other companies basically in that space, and now the opportunity for us at the company is really start to go mainstream. We have demand from across any vertical you can imagine. Company business lines I didn't know existed that genuinely, even though I have an accounting and finance and business background that want to buy Rillet and want to use Rillet. So for us it's, how do we seize that momentum now, continue to go up market and cross vertical as quickly as possible because everybody wants our product, frankly. Everybody wants to be better and faster with AI, so just a matter of how do you service that without diluting the quality of work .
John Furrier
>> I think the corporate opportunity is massive because, like you said, the PE firms are a great canary in the coal mine. And every reorg's platforms have to be merged. IT's seen this movie before. So if you're in the IT world, you know that when acquisitions happen, I see that clearly. But I also see companies transforming themselves because they're becoming AI native in an intra-entrepreneur way. They're entrepreneurial inside the company. So they're having to have structural conversations around how we organize our resources, capital allocation, I mentioned that earlier, and direction. That's a huge market. What's your advice to them because I think ... And how do they bring you in? Is it shadow software?>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> Do you get a little beachhead, land and expand? I mean, because it's not as easy to rip and replace. And ERPs are plumbing for the companies. Take me through the corporate piece, how you see that.>> Yep. Two things. Our system is a lot easier to implement. We use AI for some of the onboarding, data lift and shift, data categorization, reconciliation between the systems. So it's faster to do and most of our, especially our enterprise customers will run parallel tracks for some of them even a couple of months to make sure they're comfortable with both systems, everything's cut over properly and neatly. And that's a really important component, I guess, of what we're doing. There is still, as much as AI and technology is making all that faster, there is a human component where change management is just hard. That's where we have an awesome team of accountants, CPAs that have lived through these experiences. A lot of us have our own ax to grind with a NetSuite or have been wronged by one of these legacy ERPs, including myself, once in their career before. So we, on the human side, help people through it, help rewire the systems, help champion that internally. It's a true systems meets human type of-
John Furrier
>> I mean, we've been doing a CFO series on theCUBE here for over a year now. It's only been quarterly, but not heavy because it's now evolving. I see on the fifth back channel, a lot of CFOs having peer-to-peer conversations. A lot of your customers are in discovery mode because they really are told, "We have to AIify our business." So they're looking for guidance, templates, ways to execute. I think it's not a strategy risk because saying, "Bring AI in," is a pretty easy strategy statement. The tactics on the execution seems to be the theme this year. Do you have any thoughts on how you see execution? Because again, you can't screw up finance.>> 100%.
John Furrier
>> That's the numbers.>> Yep, exactly. Yeah, I know. I see two categories. There's category number one, which is, again, you bring in a system like Rillet, truly AI native, helps transform your function and you can deploy our agentic workflows within a framework of like, okay, my data's secure, I trust Rillet. It has that accounting deterministic underlying layer. So that's one thing. I think maybe very interesting for your audience is also how do I get started without bringing in a big system? And that's where I just ... Personally, I'm a huge Claude user at this point in time. You can literally, if you don't know how to get started with Claude, you can ask it, "How do I get started?" With MCP, you can connect across all your various systems. Obviously security can be a bit of a concern at times depending on your size of your company, but what I would recommend is just tinkering with some of the tooling yourself. If you have a little bit of that builder at heart, it is so empowering to build stuff with Claude. That's usually the best way where
John Furrier
>> All right. So we're featuring the agent conference that Simon's having coming up in May. This is part of that preview. Of course, we have our newly announced agentic AI podcast series in conjunction with the Linux Foundation. A lot of developers are coming up, but also you don't have to be a coder. Claude is very easy to use. I talk to many controllers and CFOS who have a technical background either in finance with a little bit of dabbling in CS, maybe they're old school. They haven't coded in years. Now they're tinkering and they can code, but they understand the systems game. So I want you to explain your vision on how you see the agentic layer, because generative AI is the foundation on top of cloud native. We all know that. Hybrid distributed computing looking really good. Now the growth and the excitement with OpenClaw. I mean, everyone under the age of 30 is smoking OpenClaw. It's very addictive because it's so game changing, but it's not secure. So you're having these conversations now around agents, they're out in the wild, security is a big concern. What's your vision on how you see agents within Rillet, within your customer base, and more broadly the industry?>> I think everything's built around a few source system of records and core databases in this new age. And then to your point, I think CFOs, controllers will basically become orchestrators or runners of agentic systems, swarms, autonomous systems, whatever you want to call it, which will be a mix between agents that they can literally build themselves in a Claude, Claude Code like interface with people building full FP&A like functionality, headcount planning functionality themselves customized to their business. So that's one great example of do-it-yourself. You can bring in third party software to help do that. Again, Rillet is one example with our Aura flows and agentic workflows there. And then thirdly, one, I think underestimated opportunity potentially for folks out there. A lot of the big four that we're working with, the top accounting, audit and advisory firms also have huge teams themselves that can help deploy AI. Usually it's a bit of a mix of both, a mix of these three things that people get, can get started.
John Furrier
>> It's interesting, the cloud game has shown us what operating leverage looks like with SaaS. I think that the AI era infrastructure and AI native development will be a significant step function, more operating leverage for the service, FP&A. Because it is so aligned with domain knowledge because it's not an off the shelf or here's a SaaS app, download it, deploy it, here's a . You can actually make it a non-deterministic thing with determinism built in. I mean, this is magic. This is where it's going. What's your reaction to that? And as you think about that leverage, this ultimate service here is financial reporting, steering, strategy, giving the business leaders accuracy, real time telemetry on the business.>> I think a little bit of all that you've mentioned. The thing that I'm personally most excited about here and the future that's to come is 100% a mix between agentic systems as well as deterministic guardrails as part of that. Let's not forget SOX requirements, audit readiness, all these things around that. Basically the ERP or the powering engine will become a system that can generate reports and financial statements in close to real time, at any day, any hour of time, in a permission fashion, share this information out with people and then make it easy for auditors and whoever needs to make sure that on a compliance side we're all buttoned up, can have easy access to it. And if you combine these two things, real time reporting with continuous audit, I think you have a real magic mix where closing the books and these monthly, quarterly recurring routines will still be around from an audit perspective, but I think from a workflow perspective for finance teams, it'll be all muddied up and real time.
John Furrier
>> And of course, watch the cash.>> Exactly. Don't run out of cash, yeah.
John Furrier
>> I had a startup founder say, "John, what's your best advice for me?" "Don't run out of cash.">> Make your customers happy. Don't run out of cash.
John Furrier
>> I mean, that is where an agent could come in handy with some of the automation. "Hey, cash flow, let's look at receivables." There's all kinds of alarms and systems you can deploy that can be smart.>> Yeah, I'm a huge fan of what we're building. I really, I don't want to plug the system too much, but we have an agent that can literally generate a 13 week cashflow forecast on a rolling basis, incorporating what you just said, like, what are my current cash balances? What is my overdue AR? What is my expected payments on the overdue AR? How's my AP trending? All these things.
John Furrier
>> Compensation. Variable comp is another huge->> Sales commissions.
John Furrier
>> Cost of sales, big part of the balance sheet. Huge blow back if you get that wrong on cash. These are things that people think about.>> Yeah, I know. It's huge.
John Furrier
>> All right, so final question. Explain what AI native means for folks out there watching you guys, your platform. What does it mean to them? What's changed the most in their world that's legit, executable today, but a bridge to the future as it gets built out in real time?>> The time savings are real. I think for everybody that's familiar with what it means, every month end to go and do the same reconciliation over and over again, just having that being done by a system, having AI help you through that work is just a huge emotional, I think, help that you give to the users of the software and the accountants actually doing the work. You can argue the business maybe doesn't care as much about that because that's "what they're paid for," but I think you have a huge personal impact there just emotionally. I want to underscore that a lot. And then where we see the most tactical applications is again, combining that clean data that you have from the system with Claude MCP and sharing that information out. So people build AI companies where gross margins are really important given their high token consumption, can share out dashboards with the whole organization, the sales teams, literally ticking in real time and not only obviously help the company, but also for them personally. They're heroes to the company because these are mission critical workflows. It's a little bit of like maybe accounting and finance will get more seen, take less of that emotional stress out, get more seen and help the business truly as a revenue and strategic driver versus someone in the backseat.
John Furrier
>> Well, it's great to chat with you. Again, it's an area that is ERP, it's finance, but I think all verticals are impacted. I think you're a real case study. Your goals for the next year, what's on your agenda? What's your focus? What are you optimizing for?>> Make our customers happy, grow revenue. That's the two things that matter.
John Furrier
>> All right. Can you share any numbers?>> No. We have a lot of folks circling, wanting to know our numbers in the venture capital.
John Furrier
>> How about the funding history? Can you share just where you're at, what's happened, how much is invested, who's involved?>> No, we're very proud to be working with some of the best in the industry. We raised over $100 million to date with just two rounds last year in May and August. I think it was, the sequence was literally 12 weeks because we doubled our ARR in 12 weeks just alone back then. So investors are Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz and ICONIQ as our key marquis investors and we work with a lot of
John Furrier
>> They're very founder friendly. They're very founder friendly.>> Super founder friendly.
John Furrier
>> Sequoia, ServiceNow. Doug Leone's back. I see him there. He's a legend.>> Exactly.
John Furrier
>> I could not see him back at the firm. Well, congratulations. Thanks for coming on theCUBE.>> Thank you, John.
John Furrier
>> Again, a great example of AI native. The SaaS-pocalypse is not necessarily that AI is going to replace software, just bad software gets replaced by better software. AI is part of that. If you look at what you have today, the capabilities of AI are more multifunction within the system. It's not just a tool, it's a series of tools, it's the platforms. This is what we're seeing. That's the common thread. Of course, got to get the grind out, the compliance and get all that stuff right, and agents will then fly. I'm John Furrier. Doing our best part to bring you the data here on theCUBE. Thanks for watching.
John Furrier