AI Is Coming for One of Legacy Software’s Most Defensible Businesses as a New Challenger Takes on Oracle, SAP and Workday
Swapping out an ERP system has been compared to open-heart surgery, which is exactly why Oracle, SAP, and Workday have held their ground through every technology wave. Now an AI-native startup backed by a former Sequoia partner is betting that…
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On CNBC on August 31, Rillet co-founder and CEO Nicolas Kopp appeared alongside investor Roelof Botha, a former Sequoia partner, to share how his company is rebuilding enterprise resource planning (ERP) software around AI agents. Rillet is a private company, but the pitch is still relevant to incumbent software companies across the market.
Kopp described the product this way: “Rillet is an ERP that’s built for agents versus humans sort of clicking buttons and navigating around. Our agents help with that work 24/7 in the background, so CFOs have better financial information more quickly.”
Rillet Wants to Replace Batch Accounting With Real-Time Financials
Legacy ERP systems, according to Kopp, calculate financials on a schedule via batch processing. Legacy companies like Oracle (NYSE:ORCL | ORCL Price Prediction), SAP (NYSE:SAP), and Workday (NASDAQ:WDAY) all sell batch-processing ERP solutions today.
His framing: “All these systems that people build around in the legacy space are based on batch processing. So numbers get calculated on a monthly basis, on a quarterly basis. We’re the only infrastructure system that does that on a real-time basis.“
In a batch model, a CFO’s view of revenue, cash, and margin reflects a period that has already closed. Kopp’s segment referenced organizations moving from financials updated every five to seven days to real-time daily visibility. This helps with preparing month-end and quarter-end reports, as well as making more informed real-time decisions.
Switching Accounting Systems Is Like “Open Heart Surgery”
Botha, who disclosed he first invested in May 2025 and therefore has a direct financial interest in the company, put the switching problem plainly: “ERP is one of the most important categories of software. It’s hundreds of billions of dollars, and it’s the lifeblood of companies. It’s one of the last categories that would move to being in this new AI era, because changing your ERP or accounting system is like open-heart surgery.“
That switching cost cuts in both directions. It is why Oracle, SAP and Workday customer bases have been durable through prior technology waves. It is also, in Botha’s telling, why a genuine architectural rebuild is hard for anyone to copy quickly. Botha estimated: “When I first heard about the company, it sounded too good to be true, that the company had this fully baked system ready to go. They’d been building the company for a few years before they launched the service to customers. I think it’s a 4 or 5 year endeavor for anybody to catch up.“
AI Agents Could Let Companies Run Much Leaner
On staffing, Kopp’s own framing was that Rillet fills a staffing gap: “We’re helping accountants. The teams that use it can usually scale more leanly. There’s definitely a component of scaling more leanly, but that is against the backdrop of absolute shortages on the accounting and finance side. So we’re kind of filling that gap today.”
Rillet also fits a broader pattern the market is trying to price. Agents running continuously in the background, as Kopp describes, are the same workload shape driving sustained infrastructure demand at the silicon layer, and every deployed finance agent becomes another identity to secure downstream.
The AI-native challenger question is the same one Rillet poses to ERP incumbents: does a rebuilt architecture eventually outweigh the pain of open heart surgery?
Key Takeaways
Rillet’s challenge to legacy ERP is bigger than adding AI features to existing software. The company is betting that financial systems should run continuously rather than in batches. Oracle, SAP, and Workday still benefit from enormous switching costs, but if AI-native architecture proves materially better, those same switching costs may eventually become the only thing protecting the incumbents.
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Thomas Richmond is a financial writer and content strategist with 5+ years of experience covering stocks and financial markets. He has published over 250 articles focused on individual stock analysis, helping investors better understand business fundamentals, stock valuations, and long-term opportunities.
Thomas previously served as a Content Lead at TIKR, a stock research platform, where he helped scale the company’s blog to hundreds of articles per month and contributed to a weekly newsletter reaching more than 100,000 investors.
He specializes in breaking down complex companies into clear, actionable insights for everyday investors, with a focus on fundamentals-driven research.
His work has also been featured on platforms including Seeking Alpha and Sure Dividend.
Outside of work, Thomas enjoys weight lifting and soccer.
