Despite significant investments in financial software, many finance teams continue to rely heavily on Excel for tasks such as closing books and reconciling numbers for audits. Two former Microsoft executives have identified this dependency as a problem and launched Maximor, a startup designed to replace spreadsheets with AI agents to handle the routine tasks of finance teams.
Excel remains ubiquitous in finance, even with the presence of ERP, CRM, and billing systems. Many companies, especially mid-sized ones, still export transactions to Excel for manual reconciliation, often using functions like VLOOKUP to align figures across files. Maximor seeks to eliminate this reliance on Excel by offering an AI system that integrates directly with ERP, CRM, and billing systems, providing real-time financial data and reducing the time needed for month-end closures.
The startup has secured a $9 million seed round led by Foundation Capital and claims that its AI agents can significantly cut down the time required for financial close processes. For example, Rently, an early customer, reduced its closing time from eight days to four and redirected nearly half of its team’s efforts towards strategic tasks.
Maximor’s AI agents integrate with various financial and accounting platforms, generating necessary documentation and streamlining audits. While aiming to reduce Excel dependency, Maximor still allows data export into spreadsheets, which remains a preferred format for many auditors and finance professionals.
In addition to AI capabilities, Maximor offers human accountants as a backup or for companies without internal finance teams. The startup, founded by former Microsoft executives Ramnandan Krishnamurthy and Ajay Krishna Amudan, has attracted notable angel investors and institutional support. Headquartered in New York with an office in Bengaluru, Maximor targets companies with at least $50 million in revenue and supports both GAAP and IFRS standards, catering to a global market.
