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Stacks raises $10M in two consecutive rounds to simplify financial close
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Stacks raises $10M in two consecutive rounds to simplify financial close

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February 19, 2025

Anna Wood is the Editor of Startups Magazine. She joined…

Stacks, the AI-powered workspace helping companies close their books quickly and efficiently, has announced a $3 million pre-seed round led by EQT Ventures, followed by a fast-tracked $7 million seed round led by General Catalyst, with EQT Ventures doubling down on their investment. The rounds also saw participation from s16vc and prominent angel investors including Mike Taylor, CFO of Gusto, and Simone Rüschenberg, CFO at Taktile.

Every business is familiar with the end-of-month crunch that comes with book closing, which is often tedious and resource intensive. Although many tools are available, companies still often rely on archaic software systems as their main record-keeping, which are not fully integrated with each other. The result is fragmented data, increased manual labour, and susceptible to error.

At the same time, AI is continuing to disrupt almost every industry and the accounting industry is no exception. Stacks offers a comprehensive solution that integrates financial processes, allowing businesses to streamline their monthly financial close with a single click.

Just over a year ago, founder Albert Malikov was Head of International Product at US fintech, Plaid; before then, he worked in a senior product role at Uber’s Money team, where he observed the majorly inefficient processes finance teams go through each month.

Fast forward less than a year, the Stacks team’s customer-centric approach has allowed them to identify a key issue within the finance market, quickly build a product, recruit dozens of clients, and already start generating revenue. Albert has carried this work out alongside a growing, experienced product centric founding team, who come from leading disruptors in Uber, Plaid, Miro, and Mollie.

Albert Malikov, Founder of Stacks, commented: “I’ve seen firsthand how much time finance teams lose to manual tasks – a decade ago at Uber, we were already building data-driven tools to elevate finance into a true strategic partner, not just a back-office function. Today, that need is finally hitting the mainstream: finance leaders everywhere are realising they must go beyond just closing the books and start driving strategy and innovation. At Stacks, we’re here to make that happen. Our vision is to simplify the month-end close into a single click, freeing teams up to find new revenue streams, optimise cash flow, and shape the company’s future.”

He continues: “With AI-powered workflows, we’re eliminating tedious tasks so you can focus on the bigger picture. And we know that to truly reinvent an industry, you need a product-obsessed team that builds from the ground up, not just makes things incrementally better. The last nine months have been a blast bringing that vision to life with world-class investors and our pioneering customers – and we’re just getting started.”

Stacks is easy-to-adapt due to being fully integrated with Enterprise Resource Planning software systems and major vital data sources and tools, such as Excel, Slack, and others. There is no need for lengthy and costly data migration projects; customers can be operational in under two weeks. The platform handles essential compliance workflows and reduces risks with central reconciliation views. Features like AI-powered transaction matching, data ingestion, and journal entries help teams work more efficiently. Finance teams can hire AI agents for some workflows and easily review their work through the platform.

See Also
When global labour market data is released, headlines tend to fixate on a single metric: unemployment. This year is no different. According to the latest figures from the United Nations and the International Labour Organisation, global unemployment remains relatively stable at just under five per cent. At face value, this suggests a labour market that is holding firm despite economic uncertainty, geopolitical instability and technological upheaval. In reality, it masks a serious and underreported problem: the true global jobs crisis is not a lack of work, but the growing scale of informal work. More than 2.1 billion people worldwide are employed in the informal economy, including misclassified workers operating outside effective regulatory coverage, where employment is typically unregistered, contracts are absent or unenforced, and access to labour rights and social protections is limited or non-existent. That represents a large portion of the global workforce. If unemployment reveals how many people cannot find work, informality shows how many are working without protection or long-term opportunity. Informal work is often associated with developing economies or unregulated sectors. However, this form of work is increasingly occurring within developed economies and regulated sectors, hidden within otherwise legitimate, fast-growing small and medium-sized enterprises – and this is often unintentional. For both businesses operating solely in domestic markets and those that have expanded abroad, adopting new workforce models and attempting to respond to rapid technological change, the crisis of informality is emerging in three key areas. The first is worker misclassification. Individuals are engaged as independent contractors but operate in practice like employees – working fulltime, at set hours, for years at a time. This is particularly prevalent in gig and platform-based roles, where algorithms determine pay, hours and performance without considering employment rights. Gig and platform work often presents as flexible and empowering, however, in practice, many platforms exercise employer-like control over payment, performance management, hours, and length of engagement, while explicitly avoiding employer obligations such as tax filings and the provision of statutory benefits like annual leave and healthcare. The result is a growing cohort of workers who fall between legal categories, carrying the risks of self-employment without the autonomy or protections that should accompany this mode of work. The second area is cross-border remote work, where informality can inadvertently arise. With post-COVID remote working models here to stay, companies are directly hiring overseas talent, assuming that because the worker is not based in the company’s home country, local employment laws do not apply. Where employment is not properly registered (whether by the employer and/or employee), local labour law is not applied, or social security obligations are misunderstood or ignored, these arrangements can slip into a form of modern informality, even where the relationship appears to be formal on the surface. This is often the point at which organisations begin to seek external guidance. In many cases, neither party fully understands the legal implications of the arrangement, which leaves both employer and worker exposed. We frequently see organisations approach us when a specific issue surfaces, such as payroll inconsistencies, questions around benefits entitlement, or concerns raised by the workers themselves, including registration process failures. Business leaders should also be aware that permanent establishment risk can arise if a remote employee is deemed to represent the company locally, which can trigger corporate tax obligations. Social security errors can happen when contributions are not made correctly in either jurisdiction, leaving workers without coverage and employers facing backdated liabilities. Meanwhile, employment law conflicts can emerge when contracts fail to meet the requirements of the host country regarding notice periods, benefits or termination rights. The third driver of informality is structural. These arrangements are becoming more common as artificial intelligence and evolving workforce models outpace regulation. Businesses are innovating at speed, but legal frameworks are struggling to keep pace. The UK’s Employment Rights Act offers a clear case study of the direction of travel. Worker protections are expanding, classification rules are tightening and enforcement is becoming more coordinated across agencies. Informal arrangements that once sat in legal grey areas are moving firmly into view and what was previously tolerated is falling under scrutiny. 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As attention remains fixed on unemployment figures, informality continues to expand beneath the surface. It is this hidden cohort of workers, contributing economically without security or rights, that represents the real crisis in the global labour market. Solving it will require coordinated action from policymakers and businesses alike, and a commitment to building workforce models that are not only innovative, but sustainable and fair.
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Kaushik Subramanian, Partner at EQT Ventures, added: “It is uncommon to find a top quality product leader in Europe with deep experience from leading Silicon Valley businesses. EQT Ventures was looking for a company to support our thesis that financial close is mostly manual workflows and will be one of the first spaces in the ‘office of the CFO’ to be disrupted by AI. When we met Albert just over a year ago, it was just him and an idea, but we could not partner soon enough.”

Zeynep Yavuz, Partner at General Catalyst, said: “Within just six months of its launch, Stacks has delivered meaningful results for its customers. Albert’s relentless dedication to building a best-in-class product and rapidly shipping new features has driven deep customer obsession. In an industry where CFOs are cautious about adopting new tools for essential tasks like financial reporting, the positive feedback speaks volumes about the impact Stacks is making.”

Ruben Arnbert, CFO at Juni, added: “Since adopting Stacks, we’ve reduced our financial close time by three and a half days – a material improvement that has allowed us to utilise resources more effectively. What stood out most was Stacks’ transparency about current functionalities and future developments, a rare quality among providers. Additionally, the innovative technology and clever workflows offered a unique solution, seamlessly linking tasks, journals, and events specific to the closing process. This integration has transformed how our teams collaborate during financial close.”

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