Foundation Capital – Tech | Business | Economy https://techeconomy.ng Tech | Business | Economy Mon, 29 Sep 2025 13:01:28 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 https://techeconomy.ng/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/cropped-256Px-32x32.png Foundation Capital – Tech | Business | Economy https://techeconomy.ng 32 32 Maximor Raises $9m to Ease Finance Teams’ Workload with Automation https://techeconomy.ng/maximor-raises-9m-finance-automation/ https://techeconomy.ng/maximor-raises-9m-finance-automation/#respond Mon, 29 Sep 2025 13:01:27 +0000 https://techeconomy.ng/?p=168342 Finance automation startup Maximor has raised $9 million in seed funding to expand its platform aimed at reducing the manual burden facing corporate finance teams. 

The round was led by Foundation Capital, with additional backing from Gaia Ventures and Boldcap, alongside high-profile angel investors including Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity; Tien Tzuo, CEO of Zuora; and finance leaders from Ramp, Gusto, Opendoor, MongoDB, and the Big Four.

The funding arrives at a time when leaders in finance departments are expected to guide strategy, but much of their time is consumed by reconciliations, fragmented systems, and spreadsheet corrections. 

The challenge is compounded by a shrinking talent pipeline, analysts warn that three-quarters of accountants are on track to retire by 2030, with fewer graduates entering the profession. This shortage raises the risk of errors, delayed audits, and heavier workloads for those left in the field.

Maximor’s solution centres on AI-driven finance agents that plug into systems such as ERPs, payroll, banks, and billing platforms. According to the company, the agents take over repetitive accounting processes while producing audit-ready outputs by default. Customers report measurable results: around 40 per cent more team capacity, faster closes, and smoother audits.

Proptech company Rently, which operates across three countries, cut its month-end close time from eight days to four within its first month of using Maximor. The company also avoided two additional hires by automating repetitive accounting work. 

Similarly, registered investment advisor Invst, with assets under management in the billions, used Maximor to automate reconciliations, allocations, and reporting, gaining profitability insights that were previously impractical.

Finance should be the growth engine of a company, not a cost centre,” said Ramnandan Krishnamurthy, CEO and co-founder of Maximor. “Capital is how decisions are made. Our job is to automate the mechanics and unify the data so finance leaders can spend time guiding the business. We measure success by customer outcomes, not seats purchased.”

The startup was co-founded by Krishnamurthy and Ajay Krishna Amudan, who both worked at Microsoft’s digital transformation group. Their experience with large corporate finance teams exposed the limitations of existing tools, where millions spent on ERPs often failed to eliminate the reliance on manual spreadsheets.

For investors, Maximor represents a way to modernise a space long criticised for inefficiency. Ashu Garg, General Partner at Foundation Capital, said: “What attracted us to Maximor is their seamless integration to any ERP system. Instead of chasing features like many ERP startups, Maximor uses AI to tackle real challenges faced by finance leaders at global companies. Unlike solutions with disconnected AI tools, Maximor has built a unified platform where specialised AI agents work together seamlessly. For mid-market and enterprise finance teams, it bridges the gap between their current systems and advanced AI, enabling meaningful transformation without disruption.”

Customers are already reiterating this. Dustin Neal, CFO at Rently, said: “Finance should be a growth catalyst, not a bottleneck. With Maximor, our team delivers reliable, audit-ready outputs efficiently while freeing up nearly 50% of our capacity for strategic work. I’m excited about the doors this opens for our business—and energised to partner with a team that’s both world-class and customer-focused.”

Maximor describes its approach as a “financial command centre”, integrating ERPs like NetSuite and Intacct, payroll systems, banks, CRMs, and SaaS tools into one reconciled source of truth. Built on its proprietary Audit-Ready Agent architecture, the platform automatically generates workpapers, reviewer notes, and audit trails. The company argues this ensures compliance and transparency while reducing risk.

Maximor plans to extend automation across more accounting workflows, release industry-specific modules, and build advanced forecasting tools to support scenario planning. Its long-term goal is clear: to give mid-market and enterprise companies an “always-on, audit-ready AI-powered finance team.”

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Ex-Google Veterans Close $13M Seed Round to Fix Email Security with AegisAI https://techeconomy.ng/ex-google-veterans-raise-13m-aegisai-email-security/ https://techeconomy.ng/ex-google-veterans-raise-13m-aegisai-email-security/#respond Wed, 10 Sep 2025 16:26:51 +0000 https://techeconomy.ng/?p=166887 AegisAI, a cybersecurity startup built by two former Google security leaders, has raised $13 million in seed funding to tackle one of the oldest problems in enterprise technology, keeping malicious emails out of inboxes.

The company, founded by Cy Khormaee and Ryan Luo, both of whom previously worked on Google’s Safe Browsing and reCAPTCHA projects, seeks to ensure autonomous AI agents outsmart today’s phishing, malware, and business email compromise (BEC) attacks. 

Unlike rule-based systems, which attackers usually bypass, AegisAI’s system learns in real-time and adapts to evolving threats.

Email is still the easiest entry point for attackers. Traditional filters struggle against AI-powered phishing campaigns, which are more convincing than ever. 

A 2024 study found that phishing emails written by large language models had a 54% click-through rate, compared to 12% for human-written messages. This gap reveals how much more effective AI-powered lures have become, and how ill-prepared most defences are.

Attackers are no longer just relying on domains, they now exploit trusted services such as Salesforce, Zoom, and Google, making their content appear legitimate enough to bypass conventional filters. This has left enterprises exposed, with security teams overwhelmed by alerts and false positives.

AegisAI’s Pitch

Instead of static rules or user training manuals, AegisAI brings what it calls a network of AI agents that inspect and neutralise threats automatically. The company says customers are already seeing up to 90% fewer false positives compared to traditional solutions.

The platform integrates with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, with minimal setup required. Security teams can view real-time dashboards showing attempted intrusions, from AI-generated spear phishing to fuzzing attempts.

Co-founder and CEO Cy Khormaee explained the motivation, “We’ve spent almost a decade each protecting billions of users at Google, we’ve seen firsthand how enterprise email defences are falling behind. We’re seeing the sophistication of AI powered attacks increase rapidly while existing email security defences are standing still. This leaves security leaders without the tools they need to defend their organisations.”

Ryan Luo, co-founder and CTO, added, “We don’t believe in creating more alerts — we believe in creating better security outcomes. Our mission is to protect organisations without adding operational burden and to give security teams the reliable intelligence they need to focus on what matters most.”

Pilot customers say the results have been decisive. Bam Azizi, CEO of Mesh, stated, “As a former security founder, I’ve seen the cat-and-mouse game play out for decades—especially in email security, where attackers constantly evolve to trick employees. Aegis is the first solution that truly changes the game.

“They came into Mesh and stopped attackers in their tracks. Our dashboard shows everything from fuzzing attempts to AI-generated spear phishing and BEC, and Aegis catches them all—without my team wasting time managing rules.”

At Lokker, CEO Ian Cohen said the system immediately flagged threats aimed at critical teams, “We immediately saw threats to our accounting, engineering, and executive teams in the dashboard. Aegis enabled us to see and stop these threats without our team manually hunting them down.”

Backed by Accel and Foundation Capital

The $13 million seed round was co-led by Accel and Foundation Capital. The funds will drive product development, expand engineering talent, and accelerate go-to-market efforts.

According to Eric Wolford, Partner at Accel: “The AI era will inevitably drive disruption in email—the easiest attack vector. We were looking for a team that was AI-native—people who didn’t just whitewash with AI—people who had the DNA and career investments in the development of AI. Cy and Ryan were that right team. They are both AI-native and have spent an enormous amount of time in email security at Google.”

Following a stealth phase with fintech and tech companies, AegisAI is now moving into wider commercial deployment. Its founders argue that the industry doesn’t need more alerts or user training but tools that stop threats before they reach employees’ inboxes.

With both the scale of AI-driven attacks rising and traditional defences falling short, AegisAI is aiming to be a timely safeguard in one of cybersecurity’s biggest challenges.

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