Top AI Product

There’s a massive shortage of accountants right now. Baby boomers are retiring, fewer people are sitting for the CPA exam, and firms everywhere are scrambling to keep up. So when I first heard about [Basis](https://www.basis.so), an AI startup going after accounting workflows, my initial reaction was: finally, someone is tackling a real problem instead of building another chatbot wrapper.

As of today, [Bloomberg reported](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-24/ai-for-accounting-startup-basis-hits-1-15-billion-valuation) that Basis just raised $100 million at a $1.15 billion valuation, making it a freshly minted unicorn. Accel led the round, with GV and former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein also coming in. That’s not the kind of investor lineup you see backing a half-baked idea.

What Basis actually does is deploy AI agents that handle the grunt work accountants deal with every day — reconciliations, journal entries, month-end close, financial statements, work papers. Think of it less as “AI replacing accountants” and more like giving every accountant a tireless junior associate who never messes up the debits and credits. Firms like Wiss, a 450-person accounting firm, reportedly cut 30% of their time on repetitive tasks after adopting the platform.

The founding team is unusually strong for a startup in this space. You’ve got Matt Harpe, a former BCG and SoftBank exec, running things as CEO, alongside researchers from Columbia, MIT, and Harvard — including Eli Bingham, who co-created the [Pyro probabilistic programming language](https://pyro.ai/). They’ve also built a tight partnership with OpenAI, using GPT-5 as the reasoning backbone for their more complex agent workflows. There’s a solid [case study on OpenAI’s site](https://openai.com/index/basis/) if you want to see how that works under the hood.

What sets Basis apart from generic AI tools is the transparency layer. Every agent decision surfaces its assumptions, data sources, and logic. In accounting, where being wrong isn’t just embarrassing but potentially illegal, that kind of auditability matters a lot. The agents integrate with QuickBooks, Xero, and other major ledger systems, so firms don’t need to rip and replace their existing stack.

Founded in 2023, going from a $3.6 million seed to unicorn in roughly two years is a wild trajectory. But given the sheer demand for accounting labor and how well vertical AI plays in structured, rules-heavy domains, I’m not surprised. If you’re in the accounting world or just watching where AI is actually making money, [Basis](https://www.basis.so) is worth keeping on your radar.