Nominal AI raises $20M to automate accounting, address CPA shortage
The financial world is witnessing a transformative shift as artificial intelligence steps in to tackle one of its most pressing challenges: a severe and escalating shortage of accounting professionals. At the forefront of this technological revolution is Nominal, an AI startup that recently secured a substantial $20 million in Series A funding, bringing its total capital raised to $30 million. This significant investment underscores a growing confidence in AI’s capacity to revolutionize how finance departments operate.
The alarm bells for the accounting profession have been ringing for some time, and the crisis has reached critical levels in 2025. Over the past two years, more than 300,000 U.S. accountants and auditors have left their positions, marking a 17% decline from the 2019 peak. Compounding this exodus, the number of candidates taking the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) exam has plummeted by 27% over the last decade, with some reports indicating an even steeper 33% drop in first-time candidates between 2016 and 2021. This dwindling pipeline, coupled with approximately 75% of CPAs nearing retirement age, paints a stark picture: over 200,000 accounting positions in the U.S. may remain unfilled by the end of 2025.
This talent gap is not merely an inconvenience; it’s a significant impediment to business operations, leading to soaring salaries, delayed financial reporting, increased workloads, heightened error rates, and compliance risks. Instances like Advance Auto Parts and Tupperware Brands publicly citing staffing shortages for material weaknesses in their financial reporting underscore the gravity of the situation. The reasons for this decline are multi-faceted, ranging from tough licensing requirements and intense competition from other high-paying sectors like data analytics and finance, to persistent issues of long working hours and burnout within the profession.
Enter Nominal, founded by seasoned AI entrepreneurs Guy Leibovitz and Golan Kopichinsky, who previously built and sold Cognigo to NetApp. Their solution is an “AI-native enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform” designed to augment, rather than replace, existing financial systems. Nominal employs “agentic AI” — intelligent systems that don’t just suggest actions but autonomously perform them. This innovative approach allows the platform to operate alongside current ERPs, using a “shadow ledger” to mirror general ledger structures.
Nominal’s AI agents automate a wide array of traditionally manual and time-consuming tasks. These include multi-entity consolidation, intercompany management, transaction matching, balance sheet reconciliations, journal entry creation, and detailed flux and variance analysis. By handling such high-volume, detail-oriented processes, Nominal promises to significantly reduce manual work, accelerate month-end closes, and enable companies to scale operations without needing additional headcount. The company asserts its platform has already saved finance teams over 50,000 hours of manual accounting work, proving its efficiency in real-world scenarios across dozens of enterprise and mid-market customers, including notable names like Jiffy Lube and GoGlobal Travel.
The recent $20 million Series A funding, led by Next47 with participation from Workday Ventures, Bling Capital, and Hyperwise Ventures, will fuel Nominal’s efforts to expand its product offerings, market reach, and sales and support resources in the U.S. This investment signals a broader industry trend where AI is increasingly viewed as a strategic imperative for CFOs and controllers. AI-driven tools are not just automating tasks but are enhancing accuracy, improving forecasting and planning, detecting fraud, ensuring compliance, and providing real-time insights that empower finance leaders to shift from reactive reporting to proactive strategic decision-making. As the accounting profession grapples with its talent shortage, companies like Nominal are offering a glimpse into a future where human expertise is amplified by intelligent automation, redefining the very nature of financial operations.