Banking
For decades, accounting has been one of the most rigorous and time-consuming back-office activities in business. Finance teams have long been forced to rely on legacy technologies, sluggish reconciliation processes, and out-of-date reporting cycles, which result in analysing stale data weeks after a financial period ends. While AI has generated headlines in fields such as robotics and automation, one of its most significant yet underappreciated uses is emerging in an industry with little innovation which is accountancy.
Quanta, a startup built by finance and engineering veterans, is taking on this challenge. The company has raised a $4.7 million seed round led by Accel, with participation from Designer Fund, Elad Gil, Basecase, Comma Capital, Operator Collective, Founders You Should Know, Homebrew, and others. Quanta aims to eliminate the inefficiencies of traditional accounting by leveraging AI and proprietary software to automate routine bookkeeping tasks while enhancing financial accuracy and real-time reporting. Now, the company is making its platform broadly available to software businesses after a successful beta period.
A Frustration with Accounting Software
Helen Hastings, the founder and CEO of Quanta, built financial systems at Affirm during a time of rapid company growth. From constructing internal accounting ledgers to designing scalable financial infrastructure, Hastings saw firsthand the bottlenecks created by outdated accounting software. “The manual work required to produce data has resulted in a once-per-month reporting cadence that holds businesses back,” she said. “Quanta’s vision is to automate all repetitive aspects of accounting so finance teams need only focus on creative work: defining the business model, selecting the appropriate policies, and asking the right questions that will push their business forward.”
