Companies around the world spent about $60 billion on ERP software in 2024, the systems that run a business's accounts, purchasing and reporting, a figure forecast to nearly double to $119 billion by 2030 as cloud products, which already take 65% of revenue, replace older systems. Counting the implementation and maintenance work that comes with them, investors frame ERP as a half-trillion-dollar market.The core job of finance has barely sped up through all that spending. The average finance team still needs 6.2 business days to close its books every month, US accounting degrees have fallen about 30% from their peak and the share of finance functions using AI stalled at 59% in 2025 after jumping from 37% two years earlier.Rillet, an AI-native ERP valued at $1 billion after a $100 million Series C in August 2026, is now taking its product to the UK. The company is building a full local organization in London, with founding UK hires already signed across sales, deployment and customer support, after UK finance teams adopted Rillet from across the Atlantic before it had any local team at all.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlr9bIQtDRw&embedable=trueThe ERP MarketAn ERP, short for enterprise resource planning, is the software a company uses as its financial system of record. At its center sits the general ledger, the master record of every transaction the business makes. The software alone was worth about $60 billion in 2024 and is forecast to reach $119 billion by 2030, growing 12.1% a year, while cloud ERP already holds 65% of revenue and is the fastest-growing segment at 12.7% a year.Most of that market still runs on systems designed long before cloud data and AI agents, such as Oracle NetSuite, Oracle Fusion, SAP, Workday and Microsoft Great Plains, which are the products Rillet is replacing at its customers. The general ledger is also the part of the ERP that has changed least while other finance tools were split out into specialist products, which is why investors see a full rebuild of that core as the opportunity.The Month-End CloseClosing the books means checking, matching and locking every transaction for the month before the numbers can be reported. A survey of 624 US finance professionals in August 2026 put the average close at 6.2 business days. Teams with a single legal entity close in 4.7 days, teams that pull data from email or shared documents need 6.8 days and groups with more than 10 entities need 8.3 days.Across twelve monthly closes, 6.2 days adds up to about 74 business days a year (our arithmetic), or roughly three and a half months of working time spent finishing months that have already ended. The gap widens as a company adds subsidiaries in new countries, which is exactly what happens when a US business opens in the UK. A ledger that records and reconciles transactions continuously can therefore save the most time for the companies growing fastest.The Accounting Talent GapThe people who run the close are getting harder to find, since US colleges awarded 55,152 accounting degrees in 2023-24 against a peak of about 79,000 in 2014-15, a fall of roughly 30%. The US still employs about 1.58 million accountants and auditors, while the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects about 124,200 job openings a year as people retire or change careers.Undergraduate accounting enrollment rose 12% to 267,278 in fall 2024, yet those students will take years to reach the workforce, so finance teams are learning to do more with fewer people in the meantime. Mercor shows where that leads, with a three-person finance team supported by Rillet's AI agents running a business that has passed $2 billion in annual recurring revenue.AI in FinanceFinance teams moved quickly on AI at first, with adoption rising from 37% of finance functions in 2023 to 58% in 2024, before levelling off at 59% in 2025. Gartner links the slowdown to complexity, data and talent, while 16% of finance leaders plan no AI rollout in the coming year and 25% are unsure how to move from planning to a pilot.The data problem is the one an AI-native ERP is designed to fix. AI tools bolted onto an old ledger have to work from exports and copies, while agents built into the ledger work on the same records, controls and audit trail as the accountants. Dave Arkell, chief financial officer at Black Forest Labs, describes the requirement as AI built into the architecture, with reliable data that finance teams can both act on and interact with, which is what led his team to Rillet.Rillet in LondonRillet is building a full local organization in London, with founding UK hires already signed across go-to-market, deployment and customer support, while it is also recruiting UK account executives, solutions consultants and accounting success managers. The plan is to repeat what has worked in the US, with a local team that helps finance teams evaluate Rillet, gets them live and stays accountable to them after go-live.The UK demand came before the UK team. Within a year of launching in the US, Rillet already had UK finance teams running on its software, even though it had no dedicated local team and almost no marketing. Those customers found the product, implemented it from across the Atlantic and modernized their finance systems on their own. Nicolas Kopp, Rillet's chief executive and co-founder, says a local presence will let the company understand those customers better and support them on the ground.The company also arrives with strong partners. It has an alliance with EY, a strategic alliance with RSM and partnerships with more than half of the Accounting Today top 20 CPA firms, many of which run large practices across the UK and Europe. LinkedIn also named Rillet on its 2026 Top Startups list of 50 US companies this month, which helps in a market where Rillet has to hire a local team quickly.An Agentic ERPRillet describes itself as an agentic ERP, meaning it combines a real-time general ledger, an architecture built for a continuous close and AI agents in one system, so that people and agents run finance together with full context, controls and an audit trail. The platform pulls data automatically from tools such as Salesforce and Brex, which removes much of the manual data entry that slows down the month-end close.Public companies and fast-growing businesses including Mercor, Function Health and Temporal run on Rillet, while the company is expanding into biotech, healthcare, fintech, logistics and professional services. Its pricing is based on the features used and the complexity of each customer, not the number of seats or the customer's revenue, which suits finance teams that are trying to grow without adding headcount.Company MomentumRillet has raised more than $200 million in about two years, starting with a $13.5 million seed round from investors including First Round Capital, Oak HC/FT and Creandum, then a $25 million Series A led by Sequoia in May 2025. A $70 million Series B co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and ICONIQ followed in August 2025. The $100 million Series C at a $1 billion valuation led by ICONIQ in August 2026 came together in less than 48 hours.Customer growth has kept pace with the funding, from more than 200 companies at the Series B to more than 600 at the Series C, roughly three times as many in a year (our arithmetic), while new annual recurring revenue doubled in the three months before the Series C. The company is led by chief executive Nicolas Kopp, who previously ran N26's US business, and chief technology officer Stelios Modes.OutlookKopp expects every company to run finance in an agentic, real-time way within two to three years, which makes the UK office the first step in taking that model beyond the US. With EY, RSM and most of the largest US accounting firms already working alongside Rillet, the company can use those firms' UK and European practices to build credibility and reach new customers across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.The bigger shift is in how finance teams are built. A market forecast to nearly double by 2030 is meeting a profession with fewer graduates and AI tools that have stalled on bad data, which leaves room for a system that puts agents inside the ledger itself. Rillet's UK customers chose it before anyone was there to sell it to them. A local team in London gives the company the chance to turn that early demand into a European business.Don’t forget to like and share the story!Vested Interest Disclosure: HackerNoon has reviewed the report for quality, but the claims herein belong to the author. #DYOR.