Paperwork automation platform startup Anvil Foundry Inc. announced today it has raised $5 million in new funding.

The Series A round was led by Gradient Ventures — Google’s AI-focused investment fund — and included Citi Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Financial Venture Studio and 122 West.

Founded in 2018, Anvil offers a low-code paperwork automation platform designed to assist businesses in quickly building simple online experiences for paperwork processes. The company said the platform delivers paperless solutions to any existing paperwork process.

In offering solutions for bringing offline, paper-heavy workflows online, Anvil ensures that paper processes can be transformed into simple online workflows in hours by nondevelopers. Its platform allows anyone to create a secure online form that can populate a PDF or sync directly into existing software the user is already using, the company said.

Despite the quickened move to online working in the COVID-19 pandemic era, paperwork is still predominant in various everyday business transactions as millions of forms are shared, filled out, signed and then returned to the requester for processing. Anvil argues that the use of paperwork is insecure, error-prone and tedious and requires countless human hours to transcribe information into various computer systems.

Anvil’s current customers include companies in financial services, human resources, technology and healthcare companies. In one example, Anvil was used by Minneapolis-based Sunrise Banks to deploy its digital application process for the Paycheck Protection Program. The deployment is said by the bank not only to assist its customers in applying for government benefits but also to improve customer experience and processing times. Other customers include First Ascent Asset Management LLC, Spruce Health Inc., Pacific Workplaces, Octave Wealth and Catalyst Private Wealth.

The company’s approach isn’t necessarily new: Its most obvious competitor is publicly held DocuSign Inc. In an interview with TechCrunch, Anvil Chief Executive Officer Mang-Git Ng said that although he believes that DocuSign is “great for completing and executing a document,” it is “lacking when it comes to actually creating the document.”

“The addressable market for Anvil’s solution is limitless,” Darian Shirazi, general partner at Gradient Ventures, said in a statement. “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.”

Image: Anvil