Slope, a B2B payments company founded by Lawrence Lin Murata and Alice Deng, has garnered attention and support from prominent figures in the industry. One of these supporters is Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI and renowned startup investor. Lin Murata and Deng first met Altman when he taught a class called “How to Start a Startup” at Stanford University in 2016. They stayed in touch, and Altman became impressed with the progress that Slope made after its launch in 2021. As a result, he decided to invest in the company during its seed round in 2021, its Series A round in 2022, and its $30 million venture round in 2023.
Slope differentiates itself in the B2B payments market by offering order-to-cash workflow automation for enterprise companies. Their platform utilizes large-language-model AI to power various aspects of their underwriting infrastructure, including B2B checkout, customer and vendor risk assessment, payment reconciliation, and cash management. The company has developed proprietary LLMs and trained their models on data from the banking system, as well as alternative data sources such as publicly available information and social media data. This allows Slope to categorize and enrich bank data, create viable risk profiles, and provide financing options to buyers.
Lin Murata’s previous experience in the self-driving car industry has influenced the development of Slope’s technology. He emphasizes the importance of speed in both self-driving car AI and LLM AI for financial transactions. Slope has implemented an active learning system that enables constant retraining and improvement of their AI models as new data becomes available. This real-time monitoring allows the company to adapt to changes in the macro economy and correct any issues promptly.
Apart from Sam Altman, Slope has also received support from his brothers, Jack Altman and Max Altman. Jack, the founder of HR software startup Lattice, brings people management expertise and investing experience to the table. Max, co-founder and managing partner at Saga Ventures, has introduced Slope to potential company leadership and investors, as well as provided advice on scaling sales teams. The recent funding round for Slope also included JP Morgan Payments as the lead investor. JP Morgan Payments not only invested in Slope but also offers potential connections to its clients. Slope will join the JP Morgan Payments Partner Network, allowing them to provide clients with access to their short-term financing solution.
With the B2B payments market projected to reach $174 trillion by the end of the decade, Slope faces competition from other startups such as Paystand, Monite, Two, Xepelin, and Nala. However, the partnership with JP Morgan Payments gives Slope a significant advantage. As one of the largest payment processors in the world, JP Morgan Payments processes nearly $10 trillion in payments each day. Their support and endorsement of Slope’s underwriting and credit risk monitoring capabilities, as well as platform flexibility, further solidify Slope’s position in the market.
While the recent funding will be used to scale the team and operations of Slope to serve more large enterprises, Lin Murata and Deng have no intention of being acquired. Their goal is to build a category-defining company in the B2B payments space. With the backing of influential investors like Sam Altman and partnerships with industry leaders like JP Morgan Payments, Slope is well-positioned to achieve this goal and make a significant impact in the market.