“It’s a time of high demand for human augmentation in the accounting sector… around 75% of the US accounting workforce is at retirement age.”
Vibe coding has become the talk of the town, with autonomous agents helping developers compress months of work into hours. But in finance and accounting — domains where accuracy is non-negotiable and regulatory hurdles run deep — the AI shift has been far more cautious and slower.
Xero, the New Zealand–based company known for its cloud-based accounting software for small businesses, is now moving to change that with JAX, a new “superagent” built in collaboration with OpenAI to take on some of the most time-consuming financial tasks.
The idea is simple: bring agent-driven automation to transform how businesses handle their finances and optimize for growth. But the challenge is bigger: making sure JAX remains accurate, safe, and compliant for all users — at all times.
To unpack the vision with JAX, we sat down with Diya Jolly, the CTO of Xero, to find out what makes it “super” and how it could transform the way small businesses handle their books.
Jolly’s answers following each question have been edited for length and clarity.
How does JAX work day-to-day for a small business owner?
Unlike generic AI tools, JAX was designed for the complex world of compliance and finance that our customers navigate every day. It’s built on our accounting knowledge and combines customer data on one integrated platform (that unifies their entire business ecosystem) to deliver insights that aren’t just reliable, but also deeply contextual.
JAX learns a business’s daily rhythms and automates the repetitive work — reconciling bank statements, generating invoices, even chasing payments. What once took hours now takes seconds, freeing owners to focus on growth instead of paperwork.
It gives actionable insights, providing customers with quick access to their financial data, like revenue trends and expenses, via intuitive visualizations… It also leverages their unique business data in Xero with real-time public information to provide personalized insights for strategic decisions. For instance, they could ask JAX for ideas on how to improve cash flow or to compare loan interest rates across banks.
How are Xero and OpenAI’s systems integrated? How do you mitigate the risk of over-dependence on a single partner, especially in such a sensitive domain as financial data? Also, how is the data handled?
Our partnership with OpenAI is a prime example of bringing practical AI benefits directly into the platforms that accounting professionals already depend on.
We’ve combined their powerful language models with Xero’s deep financial expertise, compliance knowledge, and proprietary safeguards like JAX Assure. This synergy is what enables JAX to move beyond simple generative AI to agentic AI, allowing it to orchestrate complex financial workflows and perform intelligent web research.
For instance, JAX can now compare loan options or pull in timely external data, like tax laws and market trends, to support smarter, tailored decisions. It’s a finely tuned system designed to understand the nuanced world of accounting and finance, creating sophisticated agentic workflows that are purpose-built for small businesses so that the outputs are highly relevant and accurate to them.
We have a long history of strategic collaborations with excellent technology partners, and our approach to AI is no different. Our relationship with providers like OpenAI is built on Xero’s deep expertise and strict data governance. We’ve tailored powerful language models specifically for accounting, compliance, and finance, but critically, JAX operates within the same high security and data privacy standards as all other Xero products.
Xero also has commercial agreements with third-party vendors that strictly prevent them from training their models with our customers’ data.
How does JAX Assure, your proprietary control system, reduce hallucinations compared to typical AI assistants, keeping the superagent grounded in enterprise data and secure?
JAX Assure is our proprietary control system that manages and validates data being processed by the AI, and it’s how we enhance accuracy and reduce hallucinations, especially when compared to relying solely on large language models (LLMs).
We’ve continued to invest in this critical area, incorporating two key capabilities: developing safety AI agents that work alongside JAX to ensure conversations are safe and building our ability to test and evaluate the performance of JAX through simulated interactions that are scored by human evaluators.
It’s a rapidly developing area, and we’re working hard to give our customers a safe and grounded experience with JAX.
Is there any human in the loop option available, given that there can also be different compliance obligations for business users from different geographies?
Human oversight is a core design principle for JAX; it automates manual tasks with appropriate oversight from the small business owner, their accountant, and bookkeeper. We firmly believe AI should help them stay in charge of their work.
Our tools are built to give customers control over how AI works for them, so they can review the output and use it in ways that best help their business.
We also strive to be transparent about when we use AI and do our best to explain the ‘why’ behind its answers. If the AI is uncertain, customers are notified so they can provide their input and help shape the answer for informed decisions. This flexibility is not just a feature; it’s central to supporting accuracy, maintaining control, and enabling businesses to meet the diverse and often complex compliance obligations across different geographies.
Long story short, the business owner holds the final authority.
Where do you see JAX having the biggest productivity impact? Day-to-day accounting or something else?
Today, Xero’s AI already saves customers 22 hours a month on reconciliation. JAX pushes further: faster decisions, fewer errors, and forecasting tools that give small businesses the kind of insight once reserved for big enterprises.
But the long-term play is even more transformative. One of the market differentiators for JAX is that it was designed for the complex world of compliance and finance. This delivers actionable, enterprise-level insights that are deeply contextual to our customers’ business.
This equips small businesses and their advisors with sophisticated forecasting, powerful benchmarking, and proactive decision support that was previously exclusive to large corporations, helping them with their future growth. Customers can make requests like “Show my gross profit trend for the past year”, “What were my liabilities last month?” or “Compare this year’s expenses to last year.”
What are the competitive advantages for businesses that adopt JAX compared to those that don’t embrace AI-powered accounting?
Businesses that don’t embrace AI-powered accounting risk staying stuck in administrative cycles, losing valuable time and insights while competitors accelerate ahead. Meanwhile, businesses that adopt JAX gain a significant edge, with an intelligent, unified interface. This is a huge advantage over traditional platforms that force every business to fit a rigid, generic process.
Beyond just handling busywork, JAX moves beyond static reports, delivering personalized, timely guidance by combining deep insights from their business with timely external information. This helps them spot opportunities and issues proactively, giving them a major advantage over businesses relying on manual, time-consuming analysis.
Ultimately, JAX gives businesses a competitive edge by being a trusted partner. As a small business owner, they can move forward with confidence knowing their data is secure and their privacy is protected. They gain a partner with accounting knowledge that combines their data to deliver insights that aren’t just reliable but also deeply contextual. This means they can rely on the data to make confident decisions.
Do you see JAX changing the role of accountants and bookkeepers, or more as a tool that augments them?
We fundamentally see JAX as a tool that augments accountants and bookkeepers, allowing their expertise to go further.
Our AI acts as an AI business companion and financial Superagent, handling the repetitive tasks to give them back the time to focus on what they do best: high-impact strategic guidance. In an industry facing talent shortages and expanding client expectations, JAX is perfectly timed to foster human augmentation, fitting naturally into workflows to provide smart support when and where it’s needed most.
It’s a time of high demand for human augmentation in the accounting sector. In the US, the number of first-time candidates taking the CPA (certified public accountant) exam decreased by 33% between 2016 and 2021, with 2022 seeing the fewest takers in 17 years. Around 75% of the US accounting workforce is at retirement age, further exacerbating the shortage.
Looking ahead, how does JAX fit into Xero’s vision of the future of small business finance? What’s the long-term play?
JAX is central to Xero’s vision of reimagining financial management, using AI to help small businesses and their advisors work smarter, together. We believe the future isn’t about adding more software, but about creating intelligent platforms that work seamlessly in the background.
Our vision is an era of invisible AI, where complex workflows become effortless and financial management simply feels like it is “just done”, while everything is in your control. JAX embodies that direction by acting as an AI business companion and financial superagent that learns, adapts, and anticipates needs.
JAX will help move small businesses and their advisors beyond reactive financial management to proactive growth. By automating routine tasks and surfacing real-time, actionable insights, it provides enterprise-level intelligence that was once out of reach for small businesses. Whether that’s spotting cash flow risks early, benchmarking against industry peers, or surfacing opportunities for expansion, JAX helps small businesses operate with the foresight and confidence they need to thrive in uncertain markets.
That combination of intelligent automation, actionable insight, and trusted human partnership is what will define the next era of small business finance.
