Exclusive: Niural adds $21M to push into CFO workflows
Illustration: Allie Carl/Axios
Niural, which helps companies manage global payroll and benefits, added $21 million to its Series A, CEO Nami Baral tells Axios exclusively.
Why it matters: AI agents are moving into back-office workflows where mistakes can affect pay, benefits and compliance.
Zoom in: FOG Ventures and NewView Capital joined the round, which brings Niural's Series A to $52 million.
- Baral says the company allowed strategic customers and partners to participate in the round alongside existing investors Marathon Management Partners, NewForm Capital and M13 Ventures.
The big picture: Payroll and benefits remain Niural's entry point into broader financial operations.
- The company's AI coworker, Emma, is designed to execute tasks such as running payroll, rather than just answering questions.
- Niural has also added local-entity payroll, allowing customers to run payroll for employees of their own overseas entities from the same system.
- The company says it supports businesses in more than 150 countries and runs payroll and payments globally.
Marathon Management Partners' Chase Packard says payroll was the starting point because it is sticky and difficult to automate, but the broader goal has always been to handle more finance work for customers.
- Packard says Niural stood out because it built its own ledger, banking partnerships, payment rails and other infrastructure.
What's next: The company is launching Niural AI Labs to push into more CFO workflows where mistakes can affect payments, compliance or financial decisions.
- Baral says the lab will focus on the systems that support AI models, including orchestration, evaluations and post-training, but declined to say which products will be released first.
By the numbers: Niural says its PEO product has surpassed $200 million in annualized gross revenue, which Baral says is separate from transaction volume.
