Marble, a startup constructing synthetic intelligence brokers for tax professionals, has raised $9 million in seed funding as the accounting {industry} grapples with a deepening labor scarcity and mounting regulatory complexity.
The spherical, led by Susa Ventures with participation from MXV Capital and Konrad Capital, positions Marble to compete in a market the place AI adoption has lagged considerably behind different information industries like legislation and software program growth.
“Once we checked out the financial system and requested ourselves the place AI is going to rework the manner companies function, we targeted on information industries — particularly companies with hourly fee-based service fashions,” stated Bhavin Shah, Marble’s chief government officer, in an unique interview with VentureBeat. “Accounting generates $250 billion in fee-based billing in the US yearly. There is a large alternative to improve effectivity and enhance margins for accounting companies.”
The corporate has launched a free AI-powered tax research tool on its web site that converts complicated authorities tax information into accessible, citation-backed solutions for practitioners. Marble plans to develop into AI brokers that may analyze compliance eventualities and finally automate parts of tax preparation workflows.
Marble’s backers share Shah’s conviction about the market. “Marble is rethinking the accounting system from the floor up. Accounting is one in every of the largest — and most neglected — markets in skilled providers,” Chad Byers, normal associate at Susa Ventures, advised VentureBeat. “We have identified Bhavin from his time as an government in the Susa portfolio, and have seen firsthand how sharp and execution-driven he is. He and Geordie deliver the good mixture of operational depth and product intuition to an area lengthy overdue for change — and so they see the similar huge alternative we do.”
The accounting {industry} misplaced 340,000 employees in 4 years — and replacements aren’t coming
Marble enters a market formed by structural forces which have basically altered the economics {of professional} accounting.
The accounting career has shed roughly 340,000 workers since 2019, a 17% decline that has left companies scrambling to meet shopper calls for. First-time candidates for the Licensed Public Accountant examination dropped 33% between 2016 and 2021, in accordance to AICPA data, and 2022 noticed the lowest variety of examination takers in 17 years.
The exodus comes as child boomers exit en masse. The American Institute of CPAs estimates that roughly 75% of all licensed CPAs reached retirement age by 2019, making a demographic cliff that the career has struggled to handle.
“Fewer CPAs are getting licensed yr over yr,” Shah stated. “The {industry} is compressing at the similar time that there is extra work to be carried out and the tax code is getting extra difficult.”
The National Pipeline Advisory Group, a multi-stakeholder physique shaped by the AICPA in July 2023, launched a report figuring out the 150-hour education requirement for CPA licensure as a major barrier to entry. A separate survey by the Middle for Audit High quality discovered that 57% of enterprise majors who selected not to pursue accounting cited the further credit score hours as a deterrent.
Latest legislative modifications replicate the urgency. Ohio now affords alternate options to the 150-hour requirement, signaling that states are keen to experiment with pathways that might reverse enrollment declines.
Why AI remodeled legislation and software program growth however left accounting behind
Regardless of the career’s challenges, AI adoption in accounting has moved extra slowly than in adjoining information industries. Harvey and Legora have raised tons of of thousands and thousands to deliver AI to authorized work. Cursor and different coding assistants have remodeled software program growth. Accounting, in contrast, stays largely dependent on legacy analysis platforms and guide processes.
Geordie Konrad, Marble’s government chairman and a co-founder of restaurant software program firm TouchBistro, attributes the hole to how folks conceptualize AI’s capabilities.
“It was apparent to many individuals that LLMs may do significant work by manipulating code for software program builders and manipulating phrases for legal professionals. In the accounting {industry}, LLMs are going to be used as reasoning brokers,” Konrad stated. ” That requires a bit extra of a two-step evaluation to see why it is a huge alternative.”
The technical problem is substantial. Tax laws kind one in every of the most complicated, interconnected information programs that people have created — tens of 1000’s of interlocking guidelines, steering paperwork, and jurisdiction-specific necessities that often overlap or battle.
“If you’d like to put AI via its paces and ask how far it is are available in replicating cognitive features, this is an unbelievable playground to work in,” Konrad stated.
A dramatic shift: AI adoption amongst tax and finance groups doubles in a single yr
Latest information suggests the accounting career’s stance towards AI is shifting quickly.
A 2025 survey from Hanover Research and Avalara discovered that 84% of finance and tax groups now use AI closely of their operations, up from 47% in 2024. The 2025 Generative AI in Skilled Providers Report from Thomson Reuters Institute discovered that 21% of tax companies already use generative AI know-how, with 53% both planning to undertake it or actively contemplating it.
Massive accounting companies have invested closely in AI infrastructure. Deloitte has developed generative AI capabilities inside its audit platform. BDO introduced a $1B funding in AI over the subsequent 5 years. EY launched an AI platform combining know-how with technique, transactions, and tax providers. PwC estimates an entire AI-driven audit resolution will launch by 2026.
However adoption at smaller companies stays uneven. In accordance to Thomson Reuters research, 52% of tax agency respondents who use generative AI rely on open-source instruments like ChatGPT fairly than industry-specific options—a sample that might shift as purpose-built alternate options emerge.
Marble’s founders imagine the hesitance stems not from technophobia however from an absence of compelling choices.
“Corporations need to embrace AI,” Shah stated. “They simply have not seen nice software program and tooling made for them. That is a part of the alternative — to work with them and construct one thing they’re excited to use on a day-to-day foundation.”
Can synthetic intelligence rescue accounting’s billable-hour enterprise mannequin?
AI’s arrival in accounting raises questions on the career’s billing construction.
Accounting companies have historically generated earnings by billing shoppers for workers time, typically at multiples of worker compensation prices. Junior associates performing compliance work signify a major income stream. If AI can automate that work, does it undercut the enterprise mannequin companies rely on?
Marble’s founders argue the reverse. The continual staffing scarcity has already constrained companies’ potential to seize out there income. Advisory and consulting work — higher-margin providers that shoppers actively need — goes undone as a result of practitioners are buried in compliance duties.
“Everybody in the {industry} agrees that an infinite quantity of advisory work merely is not getting carried out,” Konrad stated. “Clients need it. Corporations need to do it as a result of it is high-margin, nice work. However no person will get to it.”
The 2025 AICPA National Management of an Accounting Practice Survey helps this view. Corporations reported a median 6.7% improve in web shopper charges over the prior yr, with development in audit, assurance, tax providers, and shopper accounting advisory. Web remaining per associate climbed 11.9% from fiscal yr 2022 to fiscal yr 2024, reaching $252,663.
The survey additionally discovered rising curiosity in AI adoption, although most companies have but to allocate formal budgets or develop structured coaching packages. Continued adoption, the survey prompt, may assist develop providers and gasoline continued development.
Accountants will not undertake AI instruments they cannot belief with delicate shopper information
For AI to achieve accounting, it should clear a excessive bar for information safety. Accounting companies deal with a few of the most delicate monetary information in the financial system. Practitioners can not undertake instruments that create compliance or confidentiality dangers.
In accordance to Avalara’s survey, 63% of respondents cited information safety and privateness issues as the prime boundaries to automating tax and finance features. The priority persists all through the adoption lifecycle, from preliminary choice via implementation and ongoing use.
Marble has made safety a foundational precedence. The corporate obtained software program compliance certification before releasing any product and maintains that information privateness is embedded in its operational tradition from day one.
“Safety is at the core of what we are constructing,” Shah stated. “Each worker is aware of that safety is essential. It is part of our onboarding and one thing that we contemplate in all the pieces we do.”
From quantity crunchers to strategic advisors: How AI may reshape accounting careers
Marble’s founders reject the narrative that AI will solely take away from accounting jobs. They suggest as a substitute that AI will lead to accounting jobs turning into extra strategic and fewer characterised by repetitive execution.
They draw an analogy to structure, the place computer-aided design changed laborious guide drafting. Architects did not disappear — they gained instruments that permit them spend extra time on artistic design and fewer on mechanical copy.
“If you happen to take a few of the hours-intensive, much less artistic work out of what being a junior or intermediate accountant is, and also you exchange it with a task the place you are an expert who is being artistic, synthesizing concepts, and ready to delegate plenty of duties to AI assistant platform options, you find yourself with an {industry} that is simply much more enjoyable to function in,” Konrad stated.
The shift may additionally enhance shopper outcomes. When accountants spend much less time on compliance, they will make investments extra in the strategic advisory work that shoppers worth.
“Not solely does the work grow to be extra fulfilling due to what you’ll be able to focus on, however that is additionally what your shoppers are going to worth extra from you,” Shah stated.
The aggressive panorama: Marble faces well-funded rivals and legacy giants
Marble enters a market with formidable incumbents and well-funded opponents. BlueJ, a world tax analysis platform, has raised over $100 million. Thomson Reuters, CCH, and Intuit have deep buyer relationships constructed over many years.
However the founders see alternative in the transition second.
“AI has modified what’s attainable in the {industry},” Shah stated. “We are going to work with and combine with some know-how gamers in the {industry} and likewise compete with different gamers with new merchandise powered by AI. In some instances we are going to overlook about the present know-how resolution for doing issues and return to the process itself. We’ve completely new technological capabilities — how would you design one thing from a clean canvas that works with people to accomplish that process?””
The choice to supply a free analysis device displays Marble’s go-to-market philosophy. By giving practitioners entry with out a paywall, the firm goals to construct belief and exhibit functionality.
“It permits us to expose a very compelling product that is purpose-built to those who are frightened about how to use AI or query how to undertake it. Now they don’t have to take into consideration buying one thing that is cost-prohibitive when they do not know how to combine it into their workflow,” Shah stated.
The $250 billion query: Can a startup rework how America does its taxes?
Marble’s roadmap extends past analysis. The corporate plans to develop AI brokers able to analyzing complicated tax eventualities, figuring out compliance points, and finally automating important parts of compliance workflows — all whereas holding practitioners in management.
The founders body success not by way of disruption however rebalancing. Immediately’s tax work skews closely towards compliance, leaving the strategic advisory providers that shoppers crave — and that generate larger margins—perpetually undone. Marble’s wager is that AI can flip that equation.
“Everybody needs it to look extra like compliance is carried out less complicated, and also you spend time speaking about technique and planning,” Konrad stated. “How do we modify that mix of compliance versus technique and planning to technique and planning first—with compliance as one thing that has been made dramatically less complicated?”
Whether or not Marble can execute on that imaginative and prescient stays to be seen. The corporate faces entrenched opponents, a career that has traditionally resisted technological change, and the inherent unpredictability of constructing AI programs for high-stakes monetary work.
However the founders are betting that the {industry}’s demographic shift will speed up adoption in ways in which earlier know-how waves may not. With fewer accountants coming into the career every year and shopper calls for solely rising, companies might have an elevated urge for food to embrace instruments that permit their remaining workers do extra.
“AI is going to change each {industry} — in some instances in methods that may assist enterprise fashions and in some instances in methods that may problem them. We imagine AI is finally going to make accounting companies’ companies higher and extra worthwhile and at the similar time finish shoppers will get higher providers at higher costs,” Shah stated.
The accounting career, it appears, is about to discover out which aspect of that equation it lands on.
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