US-based Collective has raised $100 million in total, including a $40 million Series B led by General Catalyst, QED Investors and Gradient Ventures. The remaining $60 million comes from a General Catalyst facility dedicated to customer acquisition. The company offers freelancers and one-person businesses a system that uses AI to automate company formation, bookkeeping, invoicing, payroll and tax filing. Intuit's venture arm is also taking part.

What it means: The funding shows AI starting to reshape a market that has relied on human labour: accounting support for very small businesses. A freelancer usually pays separately for an accountant, invoicing software and a bank, and spends time keeping them in sync. Collective tries to merge them into a single service where software does most of the work and people check the difficult parts. The participation of Intuit, owner of QuickBooks, shows the big players see the model as a threat or an opportunity. In Greece, with around 600,000 businesses without employees according to ELSTAT, the need is similar, but the tax system and obligations such as AADE's electronic books, myDATA and social security contributions require local knowledge. Greek accounting firms and software vendors have room to use similar tools, automating the entry and matching of documents so they can serve more clients. For the professionals themselves, responsibility for filings stays with them, so automation needs checking. The customer acquisition facility shows the company is preparing for aggressive marketing.

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Related service: myDATA integrations

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