Deel launches Akai to automate back-office workflows

Deel has launched Akai, an AI-based workflow automation platform for operations teams, after previously using it across its own operations functions.

The company built Akai to manage internal operational workloads that other tools could not handle at the scale it required. It is now offering the platform externally. According to Deel, Akai is already used across Finance, Tax, Treasury, Benefits and HR.

Deel says the platform now automates more than 100,000 cases a month and saves more than 91,000 hours a month across its internal operations. Some tasks that once took weeks can now be completed in minutes, while payment processing work amounting to more than 8,000 hours has moved into background processes.

The launch reflects a wider push to apply AI tools to repetitive back-office work, particularly where staff still rely on government portals, payment systems and other software that often do not connect easily. In these areas, businesses have struggled to replace manual work without lengthy software integration projects or custom coding.

Akai is designed for operations staff rather than software developers, allowing teams to create and run automated workflows without IT support. Users can show the system a workflow or describe it in plain language, after which the software maps the steps, creates connectors and builds the workflow.

The system also keeps a record of each run and includes human review, reflecting the sensitivity of tasks such as compliance filings, payments and payroll processing. Deel says Akai can process documents and datasets and work across different payment methods.

Internal use

Examples provided by Deel show the platform being used in several high-volume internal processes. In one case, a recurring benefits consolidation process that had taken 80 hours a month was reduced to 30 minutes of background processing.

Another workflow is used by Deel's Global Corporate Services team, where staff had been navigating 120 national registries to retrieve, name and file about 3,000 documents across 340 entities. According to the company, that process had previously required 170 hours of work each cycle and can now be triggered automatically.

Deel also highlighted payroll operations spread across multiple countries, currencies and local processing systems. Akai now handles the workflow from gathering inputs and preparing data through to processing in local payroll software, leaving staff to focus on review and exceptions.

"It can take our manual, repetitive tasks with a clear process and automate them," said a team lead in Benefits at Deel.

A senior member of Deel's corporate services team described the impact on compliance work.

"170 hours of manual registry navigation becomes something you initiate with a trigger and run in the background. That's not just time saved-it means the team stays on critical projects without having to choose between compliance readiness and everything else. Automate the manual work, and suddenly that team becomes a strategic asset, not just a cost center," said a senior global corporate services specialist at Deel.

Payroll teams have also been using the platform in recurring cycles.

"Payroll cycles don't wait. Every cycle, we were manually pulling inputs, formatting data, logging into local systems across multiple countries. Akai took that entire process off the team's plate. We now focus on the edge cases that actually need human judgment. The rest runs by itself," said a business operations manager in payroll strategy at Deel.

Customer example

Deel also included one external user example from Ostberg Sinclair & Co, where operations staff used the software for onboarding, employee setup and invoicing.

"We were managing client onboarding, employee setup, and invoices manually. As the company grew, it was eating more and more of our week. I built my first Akai agent in under an hour and got back over three hours a week. That repetitive work just stopped. Now I can focus on the work that actually moves the business forward," said Frankie Limmer, Operations Manager at Ostberg Sinclair & Co.

Within Deel, the platform has also been used to improve automation rates in expense reimbursement processing. An earlier automation layer handled 78% of 1,300 daily reimbursement requests, with the rest requiring manual work. After adding Akai, that rate rose to 90% and was still increasing, according to the company.

"We had 1,300 expense reimbursements coming in every day. Our existing automation handled 78% of them-the rest sat in a manual queue. We deployed Akai as a second layer. It read context, asked for clarification instead of rejecting, and learned from every cycle. We're now at 90% and still improving," said Fernando Domínguez, Associate Operations Director at Deel.

Deel is positioning Akai for teams dealing with cross-border payments, tax and regulatory filings, logistics and supply chain administration, especially where work still depends on fragmented portals and systems that do not share data easily. The platform is intended to let operational teams automate those workflows directly rather than relying on separate engineering or IT projects.