Zeni, an AI-powered finance concierge for startups, today announced it has raised $13.5 million in a series A round led by Saama Capital. The company says this will bolster the launch of its new product, Zeni, an intelligent bookkeeping, accounting, and CFO service available to startups across the U.S. Studies show the vast majority of day-to-day accounting tasks can be automated with software. That may be why over 50% of respondents in a survey conducted by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants said they anticipate the development of automated and intelligent systems will have a significant impact on accounting businesses over the next 30 years. Zeni, which was founded by twin brothers Swapnil Shinde and Snehal Shinde in 2019, combines AI with a team of finance experts to perform bookkeeping while managing finance functions -- including taxes, bill pay and invoicing, financial projections, budgeting, payroll administration, and more -- on behalf of customers. The Shinde brothers started Zeni after selling their last startup, Mezi, to American Express in 2018 for $125 million and the Indian music streaming service they cofounded, Dhingana, to Rdio in 2014.

Automated accounting startup Ceterus has closed a $10 million Series B funding round, led by Harbert Growth Partners with participation from investors TechOperators, GroTech Ventures, Idea Fund Partners, and Alerion Ventures. "We hope to leverage the funds by continuing to invest in our product. We raised our first round a little over two years ago, and with that, we did a lot to automate the process of bookkeeping," says Levi Morehouse, founder and CEO. "What we hope to do now is to continue that effort, but to move toward automating analysis and insights -- giving the small business entrepreneurs that use our product visibility and analysis on what may happen in the future using all of the data that we have, related to the history of what they've done." Charleston-based Ceterus solves two problems with its automated one-stop accounting platform.