- Causa Prima has raised a $20M seed round led by Base10 Partners.
- Its AI agents settle invoice disputes and payment terms between two companies.
- Total funding reaches $30M less than four months after its $10M pre-seed.
Most finance software fixes one company’s books. The mess starts between two: a buyer disputes an invoice, a supplier chases the payment, and an email thread runs for weeks.
Causa Prima, a startup founded in 2026 with offices in Madrid and Munich, wants AI agents on both sides to settle that argument. It has raised a $20 million seed round led by Base10 Partners, with QED Investors and FJ Labs joining as new investors. Existing backers Creandum, Kfund, and Borusan Ventures put in more money.
That is less than four months after the $10 million pre-seed that Tech Funding News covered on June 16, and it takes total funding to $30 million. Causa Prima didn’t disclose its valuation.
“The biggest inefficiency in corporate finance is no longer inside the company. It is between companies. That is where the next generation of financial infrastructure will be built. We built the part that handles that. Finance teams stop chasing and start deciding with full control, capturing millions in early-payment discounts along the way,” said Maex Ament, co-founder and CEO of Causa Prima.
Why the gap between companies matters
Late payment is common. The 2026 Atradius Payment Practices Barometer for North America, found it affects seven in 10 companies in the region. Overdue invoices make up an average 23% of business receivables, though most are settled within a month of the due date. The survey covered more than 600 businesses in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
Causa Prima’s argument is that automation has stopped at each company’s front door. Its agents represent a buyer and a supplier on a shared network, handle invoice disputes and payment timing, and negotiate early-payment discounts. The company says that gives finance teams a clearer view of expected cash flow.
Causa Prima says more than 3,000 active accounts use the network, the same figure it gave in June, and that it is onboarding enterprise customers that are multibillion-dollar businesses.
Founers and backers
Ament began his career as a software engineer at SAP, and co-founded Taulia in 2009. The company says he invented dynamic discounting, the practice of trading early payment for a discount. SAP completed the purchase of a majority stake in Taulia in March 2022. Ament later co-founded Centrifuge, a platform for tokenized real-world assets.
Henrik Gebbing co-founded Finoa, a Berlin-based digital asset custodian, in 2018 after three years at McKinsey. Philip Stanislaus, the chief technology officer, led more than 600 enterprise security audits at Oak Security and previously ran engineering under Ament at Centrifuge.
Base10 focuses on automating the “real economy,” and its portfolio includes Nubank, Brex, and Instacart.In June, it closed two funds totaling $850 million, lifting assets under management to $2.6 billion, and described it as one of the biggest Black-led venture firms. QED Investors, a fintech specialist, led AvidXchange’s Series B, according to a 2023 release. FJ Labs focuses on marketplaces and network-effect businesses, TechCrunch has reported.
“Every dollar going into [accounts payable and accounts receivable] automation today assumes the bottleneck sits inside one company. Causa Prima is building for the handoff between companies. Following the pre-seed into this round three months later reflects both the size of that problem and the pace at which the team is building,” said Rexhi Dollaku, general partner at Base10 Partners.
Causa Prima has 25 employees across Madrid and Munich, Fortune reported. It plans to use the money to expand into the United States, including a New York office, and to keep developing its platform.
Where Causa Prima sits among AI finance rivals
Investors are backing AI agents that take over back-office finance, and the recent rounds mostly serve one side of the table.
Stuut, a New York startup that runs order-to-cash for large companies, raised a $52.5 million Series B on October 7, led by Insight Partners with Andreessen Horowitz, M12, and Activant. Its total funding is $93 million, and it is extending from collections and cash application into credit and order management.
In Paris, Cleavr raised an €8 million seed round on October 6, led by Varsity, to chase overdue invoices for businesses owed money. In London, Round raised a $6 million seed round in April, led by Alstin Capital, to automate treasury, accounts payable, and payroll. TFN has also covered Valon’s $150 million round for AI agents in the mortgage market and Tab’s launch at a $300 million valuation with an assistant that pays on a user’s behalf.
The harder question is adoption. A network of agents only works if buyers and suppliers both join it, which is a tougher sale than any one-sided tool. If it does, fixed payment terms could become something agents negotiate invoice by invoice. If not, Causa Prima is one more finance tool in a crowded field.
