French accounting firm Dougs takes €50M from Expedition Growth Capital to push AI agents into bookkeeping

Expedition Growth Capital, already an investor, supplied the €50M (about $58M at current rates). The company says it serves more than 50,000 small businesses, has recurring revenue above €50M and has grown 50% or more a year for a decade. CEO Patrick Maurice told Tech Funding News turnover reached €52.2M by September 30, 2026. Dougs ran self-funded until a first outside round in 2023. The Lyon firm is a regulated chartered accountancy that owns the client relationship. Its own agentic platform prepares accounts, and a chartered accountant reviews and signs them. The money funds wider AI automation across accounting production, plus legal and financial management services. Most rivals sell AI tools to accountants instead of acting as the accountant. For builders, this is a services-as-software template: a profitable, revenue-scale operator adopting agents to lift margins, with licensed human sign-off as the compliance layer. Late-stage capital is flowing to such AI-enabled service businesses, not just to pure software.