Exclusive: Accounting AI startup Rillet reaches unicorn status with $1 billion valuation. Its founder says he wants to give CFOs back their weekends

Rillet, a two-year-old startup building what it calls the first truly AI-native accounting platform, has raised a $100 million Series C at a $1 billion valuation, the company told Fortune exclusively—joining the ranks of AI-era unicorns racing to unseat decades-old enterprise software giants.

The round, led by ICONIQ with participation from returning backers Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Oak HC/FT, plus new investors including Bain Capital Ventures, Sequoia Global Equities, Battery Ventures, FirstMark, Scale Venture Partners and Creandum, marks Rillet’s third fundraise in the past year and pushes its total funding past $200 million. ICONIQ general partner Seth Pierrepont is joining Rillet’s board as well.

For Rillet co-founder and CEO Nicolas Kopp, the milestone is as much personal as financial. In an interview with Fortune, Kopp described the company’s mission as freeing CFOs from the drudgery that keeps them chained to spreadsheets long after everyone else has logged off.

“CFOs really struggle day to day. They can’t see their families on weekends,” Kopp said, because they have to spend so much time reviewing data and creating slideshows. Noting that he has a finance and accounting background himself and that his company is full of people with accounting backgrounds, he said he wants AI to change that—not by...