TL;DR

Dost, an AI-powered financial automation platform, has launched in the UK market following a £6 million Series A funding round led by Octopus Ventures. The Spanish fintech brings technology already deployed across 150+ European enterprises to tackle manual invoice processing, claiming 80% administrative cost reductions, over 95% accuracy rates, and 2.5x finance team productivity increases.

Proven Technology Enters UK Market

The investment marks a significant UK technology bet on AI innovation, with Dost bringing battle-tested technology to address challenges plaguing British mid-market businesses: finance teams mired in manual invoice processing, data entry errors, and approval bottlenecks.

Following a successful pilot phase with early UK enterprise customers across manufacturing, construction, logistics, and automotive sectors, Dost is formalising its UK presence with a dedicated seven-person local team for sales, marketing, and customer success. CEO and co-founder Adam Barbera has relocated to London to lead the expansion.

Globally, Dost serves over 150 enterprise customers and has processed more than 4 million accounting transactions to date, delivering measurable impact across European deployments.

Proprietary AI for “Real Economy” Complexity

Unlike competitors relying on third-party OCR (Optical Character Recognition) tools, Dost has built proprietary AI models trained specifically for complex, high-volume financial document processing. Its platform automates the entire procure-to-pay and order-to-cash lifecycle, focusing on what the founding team calls the “real economy”—established sectors with intricate supply chains and multi-page invoices that generic automation tools struggle to handle.

The platform’s core capabilities include:

  • Intelligent document capture: Automatic digitisation of invoices, delivery notes, and purchase orders from any source, eliminating manual data entry
  • Advanced three-way matching: AI-powered line-item reconciliation of purchase orders, invoices, and delivery proofs, automatically flagging discrepancies to prevent fraud and overpayment
  • Customisable approval workflows: Automated routing based on company-specific processes, removing bottlenecks
  • Seamless ERP integration: Deep integration with existing enterprise systems, including SAP, NetSuite, Microsoft, and Sage
  • Supplier portal: Self-service interface for vendors to track invoice status and payments, reducing finance team inquiries
  • Real-time analytics: Live visibility into spending patterns and supplier performance for CFOs

Strategic UK Market Entry

“We spent the last three years solving these problems for European companies—refining our AI on millions of real-world transactions,” commented Barbera. “UK businesses face identical challenges, but the market is significantly larger and more receptive to proven innovation. The endorsement from Octopus Ventures validates that our technology translates across borders—and that we’re ready to scale here.”

Uthish Ranjan, Partner at Octopus Ventures, said: “Dost is an AI-native platform tackling one of finance’s most entrenched inefficiencies—invoice processing. Its product thrives in the messy, unstructured reality of mid-market and enterprise operations. The customer feedback we heard speaks for itself: they’re consistently impressed by Dost’s ability to process complex data at scale with remarkable accuracy.”

Funding and Growth Strategy

The Series A round brings Dost’s total funding to €8.9 million (approximately £7.8 million), including participation from new investor TQ Ventures and continued support from existing backers Draper B1, Born Capital, and Eoniq.fund.

The capital will fuel Dost’s dual growth strategy: consolidating its leadership position in Spain, where it was founded in 2021, and accelerating UK market entry with the new London team.

Looking Forward

Barbera added: “Our philosophy is to build technology that becomes indispensable by becoming invisible. When your AP process just works—no chasing invoices, no reconciliation headaches, no payment errors—that’s when finance teams can become true strategic partners to the business.”

The UK launch positions Dost to capture mid-market finance automation demand as British businesses seek to reduce administrative overhead and improve financial controls. The company’s focus on “real economy” sectors with complex invoicing requirements differentiates it from consumer-oriented fintech offerings, targeting established industries where automation ROI is most immediately demonstrable.

Source: Finextra

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