In spite of millions spent on financial software, many finance groups still depend upon Excel to shut their books and reconcile numbers even as getting ready them for audit. Two former Microsoft executives view it as a trouble — and they have started Maximor to update spreadsheets with AI agents for the grunt work finance teams perform.
Excel spreadsheets are anywhere in finance. Even with committed ERP, CRM, and billing structures, many mid-sized companies and corporations nevertheless export transactions into Excel for manual reconciliation. Teams often deal with spreadsheets as makeshift databases, sometimes even depending on functions like VLOOKUP — a feature used to pull matching numbers from one table into some other — to line up figures across files.
Maximor goals to replace groups finance teams’ reliance on Excel with its AI system, and has emerged from stealth with a $9 million seed round led by way of Foundation Capital.
The startup uses a network of AI agents that join directly to ERP, CRM, and billing systems to constantly pull transactions. That, co-founder and CEO Ramnandan Krishnamurthy stated in an exclusive interview, assist unify operational and financial statistics and offer real-time financial visibility — instead of awaiting until month-end to sort it all out.
The technique must assist decrease the time required for the month-end close, he believes. For example, Maximor stated that proptech corporation Rently, one of its early customers, reduce its closing from 8 days to 4 and avoided more accounting hires. Rently was able of redirect almost half of its team’s time to strategic work after the use of Maximor’s agentic platform, Rently’s CFO Dustin Neel stated.
Maximor’s financial marketers plug into ERPs like NetSuite and Intacct, accounting equipment together with QuickBooks and Zoho Books, and quite a range payroll, CRM, and other SaaS platforms. Once linked, they create workpapers, reviewer notes, and audit trails — supporting streamline audits.
Despite the fact that Maximor goals to decrease reliance on Excel, it still permits groups to export reconciled data into spreadsheets — a format that many auditors and finance staff select before sending numbers to audit.
“We’re interoperable with Excel on that part, as our platform does the work and might present it in our own UI or in Excel directly,” Krishnamurthy.
In addition to its AI agents, Maximor gives human accountants as a human-in-the-loop option for its AI work, or as an accounting service for corporations without in-house finance groups. It’s an interesting failsafe, given that Maximor pitches itself as an AI startup that automates this work. Depending on humans may also seem at odds with that promise.
However, Krishnamurthy informed TechCrunch that the software is self-enough, with agents managing end-to-end work independently. The agents act as preparers and people act as reviewers, he stated, adding that it works just like traditional accounting groups, wherein junior staff manage ordinary tasks and managers target on oversight.
Krishnamurthy co-based Maximor within the summer of 2024 after years at Microsoft as a founding member of its digital transformation group, in which he led finance and data projects for Fortune 500 clients, which include Coca-Cola. He teamed up with Ajay Krishna Amudan, now CTO, who earlier worked on a revamp Microsoft’s internal revenue systems, among other tasks there. The two have worked collectively for 14 years, beginning as students at IIT-Madras.
The duo’s finance experience at Microsoft supported attract angel investors together with CFOs and finance leaders from Ramp, Gusto, MongoDB, Zuora, and the Big Four accounting companies, Krishnamurthy stated. The seed round also drew Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, a former IIT-Madras classmate of Krishnamurthy, and Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo, who was declared by the VCs backing the round. Institutional investors Gaia Ventures and Boldcap also took part.
Maximor, headquartered in New York with an office in Bengaluru, has 18 employees split almost evenly among the U.S. And India, and is actively hiring in each places. The startup objectives corporations with at least $50 million in revenue and already counts early customers in the U.S., China, and India. Moreover, Maximor’s software assist each GAAP and IFRS requirements, catering to companies with a worldwide footprint.
