London-based fintech Round has successfully closed a $6 million seed funding round to advance its AI-powered finance automation platform. The investment was led by Alstin Capital, with participation from Backed VC, Love Ventures, and Indeed co-founder Paul Forster. The funding coincides with the launch of two new products designed to eliminate manual financial tasks for high-growth companies like Cleo and PostHog.
Addressing Persistent Manual Workflows
Despite significant spending on finance software, many teams remain burdened by manual processes across disconnected systems. They are often tasked with tedious work like approving invoices, executing payments, and reconciling accounts through spreadsheets. This operational friction consumes valuable time that could be dedicated to more strategic financial planning and analysis for the business.
Round tackles this inefficiency by integrating AI with core financial infrastructure, including wallets and payment rails. The platform connects with a company's existing banks and accounting software, allowing finance teams to define rules for approvals and cash management. The system then executes these workflows automatically while ensuring all data syncs back to the company's ERP.
A New Paradigm for Finance Teams
Co-founder Pac O'Shea positions Round not as a replacement for finance leaders but as a powerful assistant. He compares the platform to AI coding tools that handle repetitive tasks for engineers, allowing them to focus on complex problem-solving. This approach aims to augment finance professionals by automating the low-value work they would otherwise delegate.
Lead investor Andreas Schenk of Alstin Capital highlighted the platform's unique positioning between banks, ERPs, and payment rails. He noted that Round orchestrates cash flows in real time, representing a fundamentally new way for companies to manage finance operations. This vision of creating new infrastructure, rather than just optimizing existing processes, was a key factor in their investment decision.
Launch of Innovative AI-Powered Products
Alongside the funding, Round has unveiled two new products to further its automation mission: the Agentic Workflow Builder and Autonomous Payroll. Both tools are designed to transform complex, multi-step financial processes into seamless, automated operations. These launches signal the company's commitment to expanding its capabilities and delivering immediate value to its customers.
The Agentic Workflow Builder allows finance teams to describe a desired process in plain English, which the platform then translates into a fully automated workflow. For example, a CFO can instruct the system to chase contractors for missing invoices or sweep idle cash into yield-bearing accounts. Once approved, these workflows run continuously in the background, requiring human attention only for key decisions.
Similarly, the Autonomous Payroll feature streamlines the entire payroll cycle, a critical and often manual function. The system automatically pulls payslips from existing providers, routes them for approval, and executes funding and payments on schedule. This eliminates the need for finance teams to log into multiple systems and manually manage each step of the process.
Fueling Future Growth and Development
The new capital will be strategically deployed to accelerate product development and expand the company's engineering and go-to-market teams. Round also plans to deepen its integrations with a wider range of banks and financial systems to scale its infrastructure. This investment ensures the platform can support its growing user base, which already includes prominent European unicorns.
Having processed over $500 million in transactions in less than a year, Round has demonstrated significant market traction. The company also intends to foster community-led growth through finance-focused hackathons, workshops, and webinars. These initiatives are designed to help organizations discover and implement automated financial workflows, further establishing Round as a leader in the space.
This $6 million funding round and the launch of its new AI tools mark a significant milestone for Round. The company is well-positioned to redefine financial operations by empowering teams to automate repetitive tasks and focus on strategic growth. As businesses increasingly adopt AI, Round's infrastructure-first approach is paving the way for the future of finance automation.