| Updated:
AI startup Ravical, serving accounting and tax firms, has raised over £12m in its latest seed round as it positions itself as the tech infrastructure for the sector’s current wave of private equity roll-ups.
The tech business secured £12.75m in a funding round led by European venture capital firm MMC, City AM can reveal, along with Lakestar, Pitchdrive & Shapers, bringing its total funding raised to $25m (£18.7m) in its first year.
Ravical has over 100 European accounting firms using the platform and plans to strengthen its position in the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, continue its roll-out across the rest of Europe and plans to enter the US market. It targets mid-tier accountancy firms and private equity-backed consolidators, pitching its software as a way to sever the traditional link between revenue growth and headcount.
Private equity activity has been surging in the accountancy sector over the last couple of years, with external funders buying big names such as Grant Thornton and Evelyn Partners.
Ravical co-founders say firms face major integration hurdles. Speaking to City AM, Joris Van Der Gucht, co-founder and chief executive, said: “For consolidating groups, many of them private equity backed, we position Ravical as the underlying layer that ties acquired firms together. As these groups grow through acquisitions, they need to integrate those firms, standardise processes and scale expertise across a much larger client base.”
Van Der Gucht, who also co-founded cloud accounting platform Silverfin, said, “Every firm will use AI, so the real question is who controls it.”
Sector lacks ‘Harvey or Legora’ moment
Mina Samaan, general partner at MMC Ventures, said: “Accounting hasn’t had its Harvey or Legora moment yet.” Both are billion-dollar AI firms in the legal tech sector. “Most of the AI startups we’ve met in the space are building point solutions for a single task or workflow,” he explained
Van Der Gucht explained that while legal AI unicorns focus on helping individual lawyers draft and research faster, he argued this won’t work for accounting, which has already survived multiple waves of automation, as the “real value lies in the judgement and experience of a firm’s best people”.