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Tipalti raises $200M; rolls out more AI Agents


Tipalti has been busy. Over the last few months the company has announced:


Tipalti is signaling that it's betting heavily on AI as the next growth engine. But the real question is: how transformative are these new tools for finance teams?


What Tipalti’s AI Suite Includes

Tipalti's CPO, Roby Baruch, announced Tipalti's AI roadmap and featured Tipalti's AI agent bench including:

  • AI Assistant – a natural language chat with access to your data and workflows (e.g., “Which invoices are pending approval and who approves them?”). Useful, especially for casual users, but I feel that day to day AP accountants will immediately go over to their reports. If this AI assistant can operate as a power search it can and will be useful to non casual users as well.

  • Reporting Agent – lets you ask for reports in natural language (e.g., “Unpaid invoices due in April over $10K”). Again this can be great for casual users querying the data and for users that not used to the report generator. A step forward, but I wonder if it really goes much beyond filters, periods and pre-built reports.



  • Bill Approver Agent – predicts approvers for bills. This is an interesting case. If the approvers are known (based on a workflow) it's probably best that this would be fully automated when the invoice is recorded. However, If someone manually needs to assign an approver AI can help to the AP team member but it also opens up a risk of reliance.



  • Tax Form Scan Agent – essentially an OCR tool for W-9s. Helpful, but not groundbreaking.




  • Purchase Request Agent – converts natural language into purchase request forms.



My Take on the AI Features

Overall, the AI rollout feels incremental, more user interface enhancements than true game-changers. In fact, they remind me of QuickBooks’ AI agents that I covered last month: smart enhancements, but not yet a full-on virtual finance team.


The features mostly automate form-filling, filtering, and default-based logic with a natural language layer. They make Tipalti easier to use, but they don’t fundamentally expand its role in enterprise finance.


Where Tipalti Fits in the AI Landscape

Tipalti is a tool I like a lot it excels at supplier payments, onboarding, and controls. But it’s an edge tool in the enterprise stack. It only sees one slice of the financial picture. So while its reports are helpful, they’re not going to deliver the kind of strategic insights you’d expect from an ERP system.


I think moves like NetSuite’s recent move opening up ERP to bring-your-own-AI via MCP connectors may prove more impactful at the corporate strategy level. By contrast, Tipalti’s AI plays feel tactical, not transformative.


If I were Tipalti, I’d push AI deeper into outward-facing workflows:

  • Automating supplier onboarding.

  • Enhancing supplier communications.

  • Acting as a relationship manager between finance teams and vendors.

That’s where the real leverage lies.


Tipalti remains a strong tool for payables automation, but don’t expect it to suddenly become your strategy engine. For that, the ERP, not the edge tools, will continue to be the hub.



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