Sumary raises $25 million seed to bring AI to Europe's accounting firms
Less than a year after its pre-seed, the Copenhagen start-up says it already works with most of the 20 largest accounting firms in the Nordics. Two co-founders are moving to London as the company expands in the UK and Benelux.
Sumary, a Copenhagen start-up that builds AI software for accounting firms, has raised $25 million (about EUR 22 million) in a seed round led by Singular, the company announced on 10 November. Existing investors byFounders, Partech and Tenity also took part, The Next Web and EU-Startups report.
Sumary describes the round as the largest seed round for an accounting software company in Europe. It comes less than a year after a $4.2 million pre-seed round in November 2025.
What Sumary does
Sumary calls its product an AI operating system for accounting work. It runs a firm's core recurring tasks, such as the monthly close, VAT returns and year-end preparation, across each client and on whichever bookkeeping system that client already uses. Each piece of work arrives prepared, and an accountant reviews and signs off every step, the company says.
According to Sumary, firms that have used the software for three months spend 50% less time on a monthly close and 75% less on a VAT return. These are the company's own figures. A research team in Copenhagen has built a benchmark of real accounting tasks, which Sumary uses to test which AI models are best at each job before they handle a client's books.
Founded in 2025, Sumary says it now works with most of the 20 largest accounting firms in the Nordics. Its customers include Deloitte, Grant Thornton and Baker Tilly, and The Next Web reports that it has signed contracts with large UK firms that it did not name.
Founders and backers
The company was founded by Pascar Sivam (chief executive) and Bastian Schneider, both former McKinsey consultants, together with Lucas Rantzau, Frederik Hvilshøj and Frederik Skov Wacher, EU-Startups reports. Angel investors in the round include Steve Anavi of Qonto, Tuomas Artman of Linear, Stanislas Polu of Dust, Steffen Tjerrild of Synthesia, Jannick Malling of Public.com and Ben Freeman of Omnea, according to the company.
Sivam said accounting firms are being asked to do more with fewer people and that software has to take on the preparation work so accountants can spend their time with clients and their own teams. Jeremy Uzan, general partner at Singular, said Sumary has one of the strongest founding teams the firm has seen in Europe at this stage.
London as the commercial hub
Sumary will use the money to grow across Europe. London becomes its commercial hub, while Copenhagen remains the base for product, engineering and AI research. Sivam and chief operating officer Frederik Skov Wacher are moving to London, and the company is expanding into Benelux next, The Next Web and EU-Startups report. Sumary says it will grow its commercial team and its forward deployed accountants, who work alongside customer firms from the start.
A crowded and growing category
Europe's accounting firms earn an estimated EUR 133 billion a year in fees, according to Sumary, but much of the work is still done by hand, and firms struggle to hire enough qualified staff. That combination has made accounting one of the most active areas for AI investment in Europe this year.
EU-Startups lists several recent rounds in the space, including Spain's Kabilio, Germany's Integral and mika, the UK's Tallia and Belgium's Dytto. We have covered Kabilio's EUR 10 million round and Ravical's $17 million seed, which also targets accounting firms rather than replacing them. At the same time, a new wave of AI-native accounting firms is starting to compete directly with established practices.
What it means for European founders and investors
Sumary's round shows how quickly investors are now prepared to write large cheques for vertical AI companies with early enterprise traction. A $25 million seed, within a year of a $4.2 million pre-seed, would have been unusual in Europe a few years ago. The deciding factor here appears to be customer quality: large audit and advisory networks are among its users.
The strategy is also worth noting. Rather than building an AI-run accounting firm, Sumary sells to incumbents and positions itself as their partner. That reduces the regulatory and liability burden of doing the work itself, but it means competing for the same buyers as several well-funded rivals. The move to London, while keeping research in Copenhagen, follows a familiar pattern for Nordic software companies that need the larger UK market to scale.
For founders building vertical AI tools, the lesson is that measurable time savings on specific, recurring tasks, and a human sign-off at each step, are what convince conservative professional buyers. For investors, the field is getting crowded, and the winners will likely be those that become embedded in the daily workflow of the largest firms first.
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