Despite companies investing millions of dollars in financial software, many finance teams still rely heavily on Excel spreadsheets for month-end closing, data reconciliation, and audit preparation. Two former Microsoft executives have identified this as a critical problem to solve — they have co-founded Maximor, a company that aims to replace spreadsheets with AI agents that can handle foundational finance work.
Excel spreadsheets are ubiquitous in the finance sector. Even when companies deploy dedicated enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and billing systems, many mid-size and large organizations still export transaction data to Excel for manual reconciliation. Finance teams often use spreadsheets as makeshift databases, sometimes relying on VLOOKUP functions — a tool for extracting matching data from one table and populating it into another — to align data across different files.
Maximor's goal is to reduce finance teams' dependence on Excel through its AI system. The company has now emerged from "stealth mode" — the phase when startups operate without publicly disclosing operational details — and completed a $9 million seed funding round led by Foundation Capital.
The startup has built a network of AI agents that can directly interface with ERP, CRM, and billing systems to continuously extract transaction data. Co-founder and CEO Ramdanand Krishnamurthy explained in an exclusive interview that this approach helps integrate operational data with financial data, providing real-time financial visualization capabilities without waiting until month-end to organize all the data.
He believes this solution will help reduce the time required for month-end closing. For example, Maximor reports that one of its early customers, proptech company Rently, has reduced its closing time from 8 days to 4 days without needing to hire two additional accountants. Rently CFO Dustin Neal stated that after implementing Maximor's intelligent agent platform, the team can redirect nearly half of its work time toward strategic initiatives.
Maximor's financial AI agents can connect to various systems, including ERP systems like NetSuite and Intacct, accounting tools such as QuickBooks and Zoho Books, as well as payroll management, CRM, and other software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms. After integration, these agents automatically generate working papers, review notes, and audit trail records to help streamline the audit process.
While Maximor aims to reduce Excel dependence, it still allows finance teams to export reconciled data flows in spreadsheet format — many auditors and finance professionals prefer this format before submitting audit data.
Krishnamurthy explained: "On this front, our platform maintains interoperability with Excel. The platform completes the core work, and results can be presented both in our own user interface (UI) and exported directly to Excel."
Beyond AI agents, Maximor also provides human accountant services: either as a supplement to "human-machine collaboration" to support AI work, or directly providing accounting services to companies without internal finance teams. Given that Maximor positions itself as an "AI startup that completes financial work through automation," offering human services might seem contradictory to its core promise, but this setup actually serves as a clever safety mechanism.
However, Krishnamurthy clarified that the software can operate autonomously, with intelligent agents capable of completing end-to-end workflows independently. He stated: "The intelligent agents handle data preparation work, while humans handle reviews. This model closely resembles how traditional accounting teams operate — junior staff handle routine tasks while managers focus on oversight and control."
Krishnamurthy co-founded Maximor in summer 2024. Previously, he worked at Microsoft for many years as a founding member of Microsoft's digital transformation team, leading finance and data projects for Fortune 500 companies like Coca-Cola. His partner, current Maximor CTO Ajay Krishna Amdan, also previously worked at Microsoft, participating in projects including Microsoft's internal revenue system overhaul. The two met during their studies at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-Madras) and have collaborated for 14 years.
Krishnamurthy noted that their financial sector experience at Microsoft attracted numerous angel investors, including CFOs and finance executives from Ramp, Gusto, MongoDB, Zuora, and the Big Four accounting firms. Additionally, the seed round received investment from Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas (a classmate of Krishnamurthy's at IIT-Madras) and Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo (introduced by the round's venture capital firms). Institutional investors Gaia Ventures and Boldcap also participated in the funding.
Maximor is headquartered in New York with an office in Bangalore, India, and currently employs 18 people roughly evenly split between the US and India, actively recruiting in both regions. The company targets enterprises with at least $50 million in annual revenue and currently has early customers in the United States, China, and India. Additionally, Maximor's software supports both US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), meeting the needs of multinational enterprises.
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