Raising New Funding to Modernize Lease Accounting for Large Enterprises Across North America
CALGARY, AB — December 3, 2025 — Black Owl Systems, a Calgary-based SaaS company modernizing enterprise lease accounting, today announced a new financing round led by Graphite Ventures, a venture capital firm with $500M AUM specializing in B2B enterprise software. Metiquity Ventures and several experienced finance executives also participated.
Lease accounting becomes extremely difficult for organizations once they manage 50+ leases, especially across multiple business units, subleases, foreign currency exposure, and thousands of assets. Most enterprises still use spreadsheets or outdated legacy tools. Black Owl automates the entire compliance workflow and allows organizations to produce fully accurate IFRS 16 and ASC 842 results in a single click, regardless of ERP.
“Black Owl is solving a painful, widespread problem inside enterprise finance departments,” said Craig Leonard, General Partner at Graphite Ventures. “This is mission-critical infrastructure for the CFO’s office. Their practitioner-designed approach gives companies the accuracy and reliability they simply can’t get from older systems.”
Founded by father-son CPA team Greg and Derek Kautz, Black Owl reduces lease accounting work by up to 80%, cuts audit costs, and eliminates manual reconciliation. Derek, who previously used a legacy system firsthand, said:
“The old tools were slow, error-prone, and created unnecessary complexity. I lived the problem as a practitioner and knew the industry deserved something far better. Black Owl is the product I wished existed years ago.”
While many customers are large enterprises managing thousands of leases, organizations with fewer leases are also turning to Black Owl to ensure clean compliance and reduce manual work.
“This funding helps us scale our engineering and go-to-market teams and bring Black Owl to finance organizations across North America,” said CEO Greg Kautz.
About Black Owl Systems
Black Owl Systems provides enterprise-grade lease accounting and compliance automation for IFRS 16 and ASC 842. Built by practitioners, the platform delivers accuracy, automation, and strong controls for organizations with complex lease portfolios or those seeking to eliminate manual work. Learn more at blackowlsystems.com
About Graphite Ventures
Graphite Ventures is Canada’s seed stage VC partner for exceptional B2B founders. Focused on B2B enterprise solutions, we back Canadian founders that aim to scale globally with discipline and capital efficiency. Learn more at graphitevc.com
Greg Kautz, CPA, CMA – CEO
greg.kautz@blackowlsystems.com
www.blackowlsystems.com
Greg Kautz
http://blackowlsystems.comGreg Kautz, CPA, CMA is a seasoned management consultant and professional accountant with over 40 years of experience in the consulting and energy sectors. At Black Owl Systems, Greg brings deep expertise in ERP systems, corporate finance, strategic planning, and technology integration.
