Benford gets €5M pre-seed to run financial audits itself rather than sell tools

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Benford has raised €5m in pre-seed funding. Its plan is a slightly unusual one for a tech company: rather than sell software to auditors, it intends to be the auditor. It is already a registered audit firm in Norway, where its in-house engine, AuditOS, is running client audits. Qualified staff scope each job, decide every exception and sign off the opinion.

firstminute capital, Global Founders Capital and Sondo led the round. They were joined by several people whose software the accounting trade already runs on: Peter ter Maaten of HSO, Arthur Waller and Quentin de Metz of Pennylane, Alexandre Prot of Qonto, and the Spandow family of Amesto, among others. The founders, Mads Bogen Øye, Thibault Mallion and Andreas Rystad, previously worked at Palantir, Goldman Sachs and One Peak. "We are not changing what an audit is. We are changing how it is delivered," said Mallion, the co-CEO.

The money will expand the offices in London and Oslo and carry the firm into Sweden and other European markets. Benford is hiring in both audit and engineering.