Ian Crosby, the founder ousted from collapsed accounting startup Bench, has raised $10 million in seed funding for a new venture called Synthetic, which aims to build a fully autonomous AI bookkeeper capable of generating accrual-based financials without human involvement. The round was led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Basis Set Ventures and Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke.
Crosby acknowledges the product remains in the design phase and that current AI models still make significant bookkeeping errors. Khosla partner Jon Chu backed him regardless, drawing a parallel to Parker Conrad, who was forced out of Zenefits before founding Rippling, now valued at nearly $17 billion.
Unlike conventional accounting platforms that blend AI with human accountants, Synthetic plans to serve AI and software startups exclusively with a fully automated product. Crosby described the current state of the technology as a self-driving car that can navigate one street but has not yet proven itself at scale.
After leaving Bench in 2021, Crosby worked at Shopify and founded Teal, an accounting startup later acquired by Mercury.
Featured image: Credit: Synthetic
