Despite millions of dollars spent on financial software, many finance teams still rely on Excel to close their books and reconcile numbers for audits. Two former Microsoft executives see this as a problem. They have started Maximor to replace spreadsheets with AI agents for the routine work finance teams perform.
Excel spreadsheets are ubiquitous in finance. Even with dedicated ERP, CRM, and billing systems, many mid-sized companies and enterprises still export transactions into Excel for manual reconciliation. Teams often use spreadsheets as makeshift databases, sometimes relying on functions like VLOOKUP to line up figures across different files.
Maximor aims to replace this reliance on Excel with its AI system. The startup has emerged from stealth with a nine million dollar seed round led by Foundation Capital. It uses a network of AI agents that connect directly to ERP, CRM, and billing systems to continuously pull transactions. According to co-founder and CEO Ramnandan Krishnamurthy, this approach unifies operational and financial data and provides real-time financial visibility, eliminating the need to wait until month-end to sort everything out.
This method is designed to reduce the time required for the month-end close. For example, one early customer, the proptech firm Rently, reportedly cut its closing process from eight days to four and avoided hiring two additional accountants. Rently’s CFO stated that the team was able to redirect nearly half of its time to strategic work after using Maximor’s platform.
Maximor’s financial agents integrate with ERPs like NetSuite and Intacct, accounting tools such as QuickBooks and Zoho Books, and a range of payroll, CRM, and other SaaS platforms. Once connected, they generate workpapers, reviewer notes, and audit trails to help streamline audits.
Although Maximor aims to reduce reliance on Excel, it still allows teams to export reconciled data into spreadsheets, a format many auditors and finance staff prefer before sending numbers to audit. The platform is interoperable with Excel, doing the work and presenting it in its own user interface or directly in Excel.
In addition to its AI agents, Maximor offers human accountants as an option. This human-in-the-loop service can review the AI’s work or act as a full accounting service for companies without in-house finance teams. While this may seem at odds with an automation-focused startup, Krishnamurthy explained that the software is self-sufficient, with agents handling end-to-end work independently. In this model, the agents act as preparers and people act as reviewers, similar to traditional accounting teams where junior staff handle routine tasks and managers provide oversight.
Krishnamurthy co-founded Maximor in the summer of 2024 after years at Microsoft as a founding member of its digital transformation group. He teamed up with Ajay Krishna Amudan, now the CTO, who previously worked on revamping Microsoft’s internal revenue systems. The two have worked together for 14 years, starting as students at IIT-Madras.
Their finance experience at Microsoft helped attract angel investors, including CFOs and finance leaders from Ramp, Gusto, MongoDB, Zuora, and the Big Four accounting firms. The seed round also included participation from Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, a former classmate, and Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo. Institutional investors Gaia Ventures and Boldcap also took part.
Maximor is headquartered in New York with an office in Bengaluru. It has 18 employees split almost evenly between the U.S. and India and is actively hiring in both locations. The startup targets companies with at least fifty million dollars in revenue and already has early customers in the U.S., China, and India. Its software supports both GAAP and IFRS accounting standards, catering to enterprises with a global footprint.