Dost, an AI-powered financial automation platform, today announces its official UK market launch following a £6 million Series A funding round led by Octopus Ventures, one of Europe’s most active venture capital firms.
The investment marks a significant UK tech bet on AI innovation, with Dost bringing battle-tested technology – already deployed across 150+ European enterprises across food, retail, manufacturing, among others – to tackle a challenge 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 now formalising its UK presence with a dedicated seven-person local team for sales, marketing, and customer success. The company’s 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: an 80% reduction in administrative costs, over 95% accuracy rates that virtually eliminate human error, and a 2.5x increase in finance team productivity.
Proprietary AI tackles “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, with a focus 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
“We spent the last three years solving these problems for European companies – refining our AI on millions of real-world transactions,” commented Adam Barbera, CEO and co-founder of Dost. “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. We’re excited to back Adam and the team – founders with deep operational finance experience and the technical capability to thoughtfully apply AI to real problems in their vertical. We’re proud to support them as they build on strong momentum and double down in the UK.”
The Series A round, which brings Dost’s total funding to €8.9 million (approximately £7.8 million), also included participation from new investor TQ Ventures, as well as continued support from existing backers such as Draper B1, Born Capital or 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 its UK market entry with the new London team.
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.”
Read the orginal article: https://ffnews.com/newsarticle/funding/ai-fintech-dost-officially-launches-in-uk-with-6m-series-a-led-by-octopus-ventures/
