Anvil Raises $5M from Gradient and Citi Ventures to Eliminate Paperwork

Paperwork automation platform helps small businesses apply for $127M in PPP loans through Sunrise Banks in less than 5 days

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Anvil

Jun 03, 2020, 10:00 ET

SAN FRANCISCO, June 3, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Anvil, a paperwork automation platform, today announced it has raised $5 million in Series A investment. Gradient Ventures—Google's AI-focused investment fund—led the round, with participation from Citi Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Financial Venture Studio and 122 West.

Anvil is a low-code paperwork automation platform that helps businesses quickly build simple online experiences for paperwork processes. Paperwork is at the core of office work in America; every day millions of forms are shared, filled out, signed, and then returned to the requester for processing. The process is insecure, error-prone, tedious and requires countless human hours to transcribe information from PDFs into various computer systems. Endless forms also waste valuable time and cause frustration for consumers who fill them out, often repeating the same information input over and over.

"The addressable market for Anvil's solution is limitless," said Darian Shirazi, general partner at Gradient Ventures. "America spends over $1 trillion each year completing, processing, and storing paperwork. Anvil's platform has allowed existing paper and PDF forms to be automatically populated with a series of APIs and AI techniques. Processes that used to take weeks now take minutes and allow banks, insurance companies, and many other industries that rely on paperwork to automate and delight customers."

The flexibility of Anvil's platform allows its solution to be applied to literally any existing paperwork process. Anvil's current customers span industries including financial services, human resources, technology and healthcare companies.

"I'm fascinated by technology that brings efficiency to businesses—from large enterprises all the way down to individuals who rely on software to accomplish their work," said Naomi Ionita, Partner at Menlo Ventures and investor in early-stage SaaS businesses. "Anvil's broad set of tools, from developer-first APIs to their no-code workflow builder, helps automate away the mundane and painful parts of peoples' jobs so they can focus on higher-order problems."

Most recently, Anvil's platform was used by Minneapolis-based Sunrise Banks to deploy its digital application process for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). "With Anvil, we were able to help more than 1,600 small businesses apply for $127M in Paycheck Protection Program loans in just five days," said Brett Cooksey, Sunrise Banks' Chief Information Officer. "The Anvil platform made it possible for us to provide a customer experience that was a dramatic improvement over our previous application process, eliminating some stress for the small business community."

"We're really proud of the way that Anvil's platform bridges the gap from offline to online," said Mang-Git Ng, CEO and co-founder of Anvil. "As virtually all businesses struggle to deliver services remotely in this COVID-19 era, Anvil's solution brings pen and paper processes online, enabling access to services whenever and wherever the customer is."

"We see incredible possibilities in financial services for Anvil's solution," said Ryan Falvey, Managing Partner at Financial Venture Studio. "Their ability to provide a working solution to Sunrise Banks in days, not months, shows us the promise of what tech can bring to modern financial services."

About Anvil
San Francisco, CA-based Anvil offers solutions for bringing offline, paper-heavy workflows online. Anvil's low-code platform ensures that paper processes can be transformed into simple online workflows by non-developers in hours, not months. Anvil enables businesses to address the challenges of delivering services remotely by giving them a tool to create 100% online experiences for critical processes, while leveraging automation to help businesses run more efficiently. Welcome to your new digital, automated, PDF-free future with Anvil. Learn more at www.useanvil.com

About Gradient Ventures
Gradient Ventures is Google's AI-focused venture fund - investing in and connecting early-stage startups with Google's resources, innovation, and technical leadership in artificial intelligence. The fund focuses on helping founders navigate the challenges in developing new technology products, allowing companies to take advantage of the latest techniques so that great ideas can come to life. Gradient was founded in 2017 and is based in Palo Alto, California. For more information, visit www.gradient.com.

SOURCE Anvil