Accrual Launches with $75 Million to Bring AI-Native Automation to Accounting

General Catalyst’s Creation fund backs former Brex CTO to transform corporate finance at a moment when 75% of CPAs are nearing retirement

Accrual, an artificial intelligence startup built to automate corporate accounting, emerged from stealth on Wednesday with $75 million in funding and a mandate to reshape how companies manage their financial operations. The San Francisco venture, led by former Brex chief technology officer Cosmin Nicolaescu, arrives as the accounting profession confronts its worst talent crisis in decades and as AI capabilities mature enough to handle the precision demands of financial data.

General Catalyst contributed $65 million to Accrual across two funding rounds, making the company a flagship test case for the venture firm’s $1.5 billion Creation strategy. The approach differs from traditional venture capital: rather than backing existing entrepreneurs, General Catalyst identified accounting as ripe for disruption, recruited Nicolaescu to lead the effort, and built the company internally.

“We do think there’s a huge opportunity to roll up accounting firms and automate a lot of the workflow and let the same accounting firms take twice as many clients,” Marc Bhargava, managing director at General Catalyst who oversees the Creation fund, said in a recent interview. “The idea is not to cut people with AI, the idea is to enable them to do two to three times the work.”

The strategy reflects a calculated bet on timing. More than 300,000 accountants and auditors have left the profession since 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, shrinking the workforce by 17%. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants reports that 75% of current CPAs are nearing retirement age, while CPA exam participation has fallen to its lowest levels since 2006. Firms now take four to five weeks on average to fill open accounting roles, with some positions remaining vacant for months.

Accrual plans to address this shortage through technology that automates transaction categorization, reconciliation, and compliance tasks that currently consume substantial hours from finance teams. The platform uses machine learning models trained on financial data to understand transactions in context, reducing the manual coding that characterizes traditional accounting workflows. The company is also pursuing an acquisition strategy, buying accounting practices and implementing its AI tools to increase their capacity without proportional headcount growth.

Nicolaescu brings a track record of scaling financial technology platforms through periods of rapid expansion. At Brex, he served as CTO and helped grow the corporate card company from 40 employees to over 1,000, generating hundreds of millions in annual revenue. Before that, he spent years at Stripe, where he led global engineering and product teams as the payments company expanded from 100 to more than 1,400 employees. He built the Stripe Terminal product and opened engineering offices in Seattle, Dublin, and Singapore.

“Henrique and Pedro are tackling a side of fintech that hasn’t yet been tackled,” Nicolaescu said when he joined Brex in 2018, referring to the company’s founders. His decision to leave that role for Accrual signals confidence that accounting software represents a similarly large opportunity. His personal website now lists his current work simply as “Building Accrual.”

The technical challenges are substantial. Accounting software demands absolute accuracy, a standard that differs from the approximations acceptable in many AI applications. A system that occasionally produces plausible but incorrect outputs would be catastrophic in financial contexts, where errors trigger regulatory violations, audit failures, and restated earnings. Accrual reportedly combines machine learning models with traditional rule-based systems, creating a hybrid architecture that leverages AI pattern recognition while maintaining the deterministic behavior auditors require.

Compliance requirements add complexity. Companies in the United States must adhere to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, federal and state tax regulations, and industry-specific reporting standards. International operations multiply these demands across jurisdictions with different rules. The $75 million funding provides resources to build compliance infrastructure that scales, though gaining acceptance from auditors at major accounting firms will require years of demonstrated reliability.

Accrual enters a competitive market where legacy vendors are racing to add AI features. Intuit, Sage, and Oracle have announced initiatives aimed at automating accounting tasks, while enterprise software giants embed machine learning into financial management suites. The startup’s advantage lies in building AI-native architecture from scratch, unconstrained by legacy code and existing customer workflows that slow incumbents.

General Catalyst’s Creation fund has backed similar ventures in other professional services categories. The firm has funded AI-enabled roll-ups in call centers, HOA management, HR solutions, legal services, and healthcare, deploying capital from the $1.5 billion pool earmarked for company building within its recent $8 billion fundraise. Bhargava describes the approach as distinct from private equity: “Unlike private equity, we rely less on debt funding and cost cutting, and focus on adding software and AI-oriented productivity improvements.”

The broader implications extend beyond Accrual’s immediate business prospects. If AI can meaningfully reduce the labor required for audits, tax preparation, and routine compliance work, the business models sustaining accounting practices for generations may require fundamental restructuring. Professional associations and educators are already grappling with how to prepare accountants for a world where routine tasks are largely automated, shifting their value toward judgment calls and client relationships.

Other investors have placed similar bets. Goldman Sachs recently led a $75 million round for Fieldguide, an AI-native audit and advisory platform now valued at $700 million. Private equity firm Centerbridge and Bessemer Venture Partners invested in Carr, Riggs and Ingram, a regional CPA firm generating more than $500 million in annual revenue that plans to leverage AI to nearly double its business within five years.

Whether Accrual can execute remains uncertain. Finance teams are conservative buyers, preferring proven solutions when careers depend on accurate reporting. Chief financial officers must approve significant changes to accounting systems, and the stakes of failure include regulatory penalties and personal liability. The path from well-funded startup to market leadership requires navigating cautious customers, complex regulations, and entrenched competitors with decades of relationships.

Accrual plans to focus initially on growth companies and specific verticals where legacy systems prove particularly cumbersome, building case studies before pursuing broader enterprise adoption. The company expects to announce its first customers and product details in coming months.

For General Catalyst’s Creation model to succeed, Accrual must eventually achieve valuations that justify the capital invested and the opportunity cost of the firm’s attention. The exit path likely involves acquisition by a larger enterprise software company or eventual public offering, though either outcome remains years away.

What is clear today: the $75 million commitment represents the largest wager yet that artificial intelligence will finally disrupt one of the economy’s most change-resistant industries. With a veteran operator at the helm and a venture firm willing to build rather than merely invest, Accrual has the resources to test whether accounting’s long-awaited transformation has arrived.