Berlin-based vertical AI startup mika has raised €6 million. Rather than digitalising the traditional tax firm, mika rebuilds accounting, tax and finance from the ground up as an AI-native financial operating system for SMEs. For small limited companies (GmbHs and UGs), mika manages ongoing bookkeeping, VAT returns, annual accounts and tax filings. The seed round is led by pan-European investor Smedvig Ventures. Also participating are Basel-based family office Wecken & Cie. (Care4 AG) alongside Dennis Bemmann and Michael Brehm (co-founders of studiVZ), Johannes Ditterich (limango founder) and Martina Pfeifer (encourageventures). Additionally, existing investors Keen Venture Partners and Dutch Founders Fund increased their stakes. The fresh capital will fund growth and the further development of the platform. Founders should be building their business, not sorting through receipts Germany has almost a million small incorporated businesses, most of them GmbHs (private limited companies) and their smaller cousin, the UG. Bookkeeping, VAT returns and annual accounts are a legal requirement for every one of them. In theory, a company's management can do all of this itself. In practice, almost no one does. One wrong entry can trigger back-taxes or penalties, and the rules are scattered across tax codes that change on a yearly basis. Instead, almost every small company hands its bookkeeping and filings over to a tax adviser or firm. Agnieszka Walorska knows the problem well. She grew up without entrepreneurial role models and had no family money or network behind her when she started her first company. A few thousand euros a year for a tax adviser may be a rounding error for some, but for others, it is the reason a company never gets founded. For anyone without savings or the right connections, this is how German bureaucracy becomes a barrier to entry. "The moment you start a GmbH in Germany, you're told you need a tax adviser. It goes so far that some founders think it's a legal requirement. To me, it's obvious that this cannot be how it works,” says Agnieszka Walorska, Founder and CEO of mika. "At mika, we use AI to tear down that barrier, so that your bank balance or the family you were born into no longer decides who gets to start a company.” Agnieszka Walorska leads mika together with Luke Linnekuhle (CFO) and Henry Müssemann (CTO). Linnekuhle helped build the finance function at activewear brand Oceansapart. Müssemann was previously Head of Engineering at Freezingdata, a digital-forensics software provider he helped build to its exit.“Nowhere else in Europe is accounting and tax as demanding or costly for small businesses as in Germany, where the two are so tightly linked that a single mistake carries straight through to the tax bill. It is the reason big international players never gained a foothold here, and why SMEs were left with no real alternative,” says Freddie Kalfayan, Principal at Smedvig Ventures. “mika is the first to build for this reality instead of around it, and its customers demonstrate some of the strongest enthusiasm we have seen across our portfolio.”AI and accountants working the same books Behind mika is its own AI-native general ledger, purpose-made for German accounting. The AI reads and understands every receipt and every payment. Depending on the task, different AI models come into play, embedded in the domain knowledge and rules mika has developed itself. mika's AI categorises every transaction, records it correctly and explains to users what each entry means, usually without anyone lifting a finger. Trained accountants in-house check the results and step in wherever the complexity calls for a human. There is also something a tax firm cannot offer. You can talk to your own numbers, either inside mika or through a standard AI interface, the Model Context Protocol (MCP), in assistants such as ChatGPT or Claude. mika takes care of the small stuff too. Upload a baffling letter from the tax office and it's explained on the spot, along with what to do next. Questions about your own accounts and finances are answered by the AI chat straight away, even on a Sunday evening. Individual tax advice is not yet part of the offering. For that, mika works with licensed tax advisers from its network. Revenue growing more than 20 per cent every monthAt the start of the year, around 400 GmbHs and UGs used mika. Today there are more than 750. mika began with digital-first service businesses such as agencies and consultancies. Its customers now also come from Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), property and e-commerce, with retail and the skilled trades the most recent to join. The company's revenue has climbed by more than 20 per cent every month, and in July 2026 it passed €1 million in annual revenue.„With mika we haven't simply brought in a new piece of software, we've added a digital team member to our accounting. It's fascinating to watch AI free us up to focus on strategy, creativity and our customers. For us it's proof that AI can genuinely take work off people's hands rather than replace them,“ says Kolja Sagorski, founder of patchletter."When we invested in 2024, the 'AI plus human' model was seen as a niche. For many it was too much service and too little software,” says Djoni de Vos, Principal at Keen Venture Partners. "Today, many investors describe that exact model as the next big category, service as software. mika proved its viability before it had a name.”NoYesFundraising News24 Sep, 2026