Limelight Steel chooses Brex to control spending, accelerate AP, and fuel growth.
Company: Limelight Steel is electrifying the iron and steel industry.
Limelight Steel is a startup based in Oakland, California, focused on decarbonizing the steelmaking process. Backed by climate tech investors such as Khosla, Capricorn, and Voyager, and federal grants from the U.S. Department of Energy, Limelight Steel is developing innovative hard tech solutions for a more sustainable industry. The company uses the power of laser light to electrify the ironmaking process, with zero emissions and up to 20% energy savings over hydrogen-based processes.
Challenge: Manual expense approvals hindered critical purchases and slowed accounting.
Limelight Steel tried to enable and manage employee spend with debit cards and a separate bookkeeping software platform. However, team members had to personally seek approval from the CEO — in person or via email — for every purchase, including essential recurring purchases like lab supplies. When approved, the CEO then had to complete the transaction herself or loan her debit card to the employee.
“The process took anywhere from 30 minutes to 4 hours, depending on the CEO’s availability,” said Nishant Karandikar, Limelight Steel’s Strategy and Operations Lead.
Card sharing made it impossible to track spending by employee or project. Without a way to auto-sync or auto-categorize transactions to their accounting software, the end-of-month reconciliation process was slow and manual.
“We needed a more efficient way to control, track, and democratize our spending,” Nishant said.
“With Brex, the purchasing process takes about two minutes. We’re saving around 30 hours per month on expense reports and reviews alone.”
— Nishant Karandikar, Strategy and Operations Lead, Limelight Steel
Solution: Limelight gains time back — and a business partner — with Brex.
Limelight Steel considered multiple card, banking, and spend management platforms to unblock employees and unlock smarter spending. Nishant evaluated various players in the space, including Concur, Navan, Expensify, Brex, and Ramp. Limelight Steel ultimately chose Brex for its modern credit card, bill pay, and banking solutions, but also for the partnership Brex brought to the table.
“We loved that Brex’s customizable spend limits would allow us to automatically approve employee spend for specific use cases and cut down on reviews,” Nishant said. “Also, as a hard tech startup, we have a lot of equipment and supplies to buy all the time, and Brex offered us a substantially higher credit limit. That was really valuable for us and showed that Brex could flex with our business as a true partner.”
Impact: Limelight Steel clears up the expense and bill pay bottlenecks.
After a “really fast” Brex implementation, Nishant set up spend limits for different workstreams, allowing employees to make necessary purchases without manual approvals.
“With Brex, the purchasing process takes about two minutes,” said Nishant. “We’re saving around 30 hours per month on expense reports and reviews alone. Brex's custom accounting rules — auto-mapping spend limits and vendors to GL accounts and classes — has also lightened our lift to manage end-of-month categorizations, not only for our internal books but for the grant compliance documents we prepare for the federal government.”
Limelight Steel also uses Brex bill pay to manage invoices and payments. Now, when vendors email invoices to the company, Brex AI captures and extracts the payment details, matches them to the right vendor, and drafts a payment. Brex’s bill pay and invoice inbox have simplified vendor management for Nishant, saving him time doing accounts payable work while eliminating the risk of missed payments.
“Any invoice that needs approval is automatically routed to me,” Nishant said. “Now I just have a once-a-week approval system where I click on the bills, verify that they're legitimate, and pay them in the specified time window. Brex bill pay helps ensure that I’m not the bottleneck on our procurement."
Brex's higher credit limits and modern spend controls have enabled Limelight Steel to make necessary equipment and supply purchases to support its research and development efforts. And, with a Brex business banking account, Limelight Steel can optimize its operating cash with access to 4.17% yield and up to $6 million in FDIC insurance. All told, Limelight Steel gained more effective financial tools to innovate faster.
"The change from our manual spend and bill pay processes was noticeable immediately," Nishant said. "Frankly, I don't want to imagine a world without Brex’s spend platform."
"The change from our manual spend and bill pay processes was noticeable immediately. Frankly, I don't want to imagine a world without Brex’s spend platform.”
— Nishant Karandikar, Strategy and Operations Lead, Limelight Steel