London-based SaaS startup Briefcase has raised $3 million in seed funding, led by Earlybird and supported by Entrepreneur First and Tiny Supercomputer Investment Company, to develop the world’s first AI Autopilot tailored for accountants and bookkeepers.
- Founded in 2024 by Ján Stehlík and Reuben Steenkamp, Briefcase uses AI to automate bookkeeping tasks such as transaction categorization, VAT compliance, and description extraction.
- Briefcase’s platform learns from past data and real-time updates to simplify workflows, reduce errors, manage tasks, detect duplicates, and ensure tax compliance, all while maintaining an auditable AI decision log.
"We envision a future where AI agents automate 90% of bookkeeping and accounting workflows, making every bookkeeper and accountant 10X more efficient. AI should do the boring stuff, it should be proactive, it should tell us when to intervene and when it has the work covered," co-founder and CEO of Briefcase, Reuben Steenkamp, stated.
Details of the deal
- The funding round was led by Earlybird Venture Capital, which manages €2.5 billion in assets and invests in early-stage tech companies across Europe.
"The team at Briefcase has a deep domain understanding and a fast learning rate on AI engineering to deliver agentic capabilities. LLMs, vision models, and new scaling potentials for reasoning will mean more automation in accounting than was ever previously possible," Partner at Earlybird, Tim Rehder, commented on LinkedIn.
- London-based VC Entrepreneur First, Tiny Supercomputer Investment Company, an investment firm supporting early-stage startups, and prominent angel investors, including executives from Pennylane, Deel, Pleo, and 11x, also participated in the round.
- With the fresh capital raised, the startup plans to expand its workforce to enhance and scale its AI-powered platform.
