Even though companies invest heavily in financial software, many finance departments still depend on Excel for closing books, reconciling accounts, and preparing for audits. Two former Microsoft leaders see this as an issue and have launched Maximor, aiming to automate finance teams’ repetitive tasks with AI agents instead of spreadsheets.
Excel remains a staple in the finance world. Despite having ERP, CRM, and billing platforms, countless mid-sized and large organizations continue to export data into Excel for manual reconciliation. Teams often use spreadsheets as makeshift databases, frequently relying on functions like VLOOKUP—which pulls corresponding data from one table to another—to match figures across different files.
Maximor’s mission is to eliminate finance teams’ dependence on Excel by introducing its AI-driven platform, and it has just come out of stealth with a $9 million seed investment led by Foundation Capital.
The company employs a network of AI agents that directly integrate with ERP, CRM, and billing platforms to automatically retrieve transaction data. According to co-founder and CEO Ramnandan Krishnamurthy (pictured above, right), this approach consolidates operational and financial information, offering up-to-date financial insights rather than waiting until the end of the month to reconcile everything.
Krishnamurthy believes this strategy can significantly shorten the month-end close process. For example, Maximor reports that Rently, a proptech client, reduced its closing time from eight days to four and avoided hiring two extra accountants. After adopting Maximor’s agent-based system, Rently’s CFO Dustin Neel noted that nearly half of the team’s time could be redirected to more strategic initiatives.
Maximor’s AI agents connect with ERPs like NetSuite and Intacct, accounting solutions such as QuickBooks and Zoho Books, as well as various payroll, CRM, and SaaS tools. Once integrated, the agents produce workpapers, reviewer comments, and audit logs, making the audit process more efficient.
While Maximor’s goal is to minimize Excel usage, it still lets users export reconciled data into spreadsheets—a format many finance professionals and auditors prefer for final review before audits.
“We ensure compatibility with Excel at this stage, as our system completes the tasks and can display results either in our interface or directly in Excel,” Krishnamurthy explained to TechCrunch.
Beyond its AI agents, Maximor also provides access to human accountants, either as a human-in-the-loop safeguard for its AI or as a full accounting service for companies lacking internal finance teams. This backup is notable, considering Maximor’s positioning as an automation-focused AI company. Depending on people might seem to contradict that vision.
Nevertheless, Krishnamurthy told TechCrunch that the platform is designed to operate independently, with AI agents managing the entire workflow. The agents take on the preparer role, while humans serve as reviewers, mirroring the structure of traditional accounting teams where junior staff handle routine work and managers oversee the process.
Krishnamurthy co-founded Maximor in the summer of 2024 after serving as a founding member of Microsoft’s digital transformation group, where he led finance and data initiatives for Fortune 500 companies like Coca-Cola. He partnered with Ajay Krishna Amudan, now CTO, who previously worked on overhauling Microsoft’s internal revenue systems. The two have collaborated for 14 years, beginning as classmates at IIT-Madras.
Their extensive finance background at Microsoft helped attract angel investors, including CFOs and finance executives from Ramp, Gusto, MongoDB, Zuora, and the Big Four accounting firms, according to Krishnamurthy. The seed round also included Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, a former IIT-Madras peer, and Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo, who was introduced by the venture capitalists involved. Institutional investors Gaia Ventures and Boldcap also participated.
Based in New York with an office in Bengaluru, Maximor has a team of 18, split almost equally between the U.S. and India, and is actively expanding in both regions. The company targets businesses with revenues of at least $50 million and already serves early adopters in the U.S., China, and India. Additionally, Maximor’s platform supports both GAAP and IFRS accounting standards, making it suitable for global enterprises.
