QuickBooks Competitor Xero Raises $150 Million to Take On Intuit

With QuickBooks, Intuit has basically owned the small-business accounting software market in the U.S. for quite some time.

But an announcement today from publicly traded, New Zealand-based competitor Xero proves that, at a minimum, there is a challenger serious about making a run at upending the industry incumbent.

Xero has raised $150 million in new funds, the majority of which came from U.S. investors, including Matrix Partners and Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures. The company had halted trading of its stock last week on both New Zealand and Australia’s stock exchanges as it finalized the deal.

In a statement, Xero said the funds would help it grow its U.S. business, which it launched in 2011.

The funding comes a few weeks after Intuit announced a major redesign of the online version of QuickBooks, in part because of the emergence of newer Web-based software services with easy setup and slick designs.