According to VentureBeat, Marble, a startup building AI agents for tax professionals, has raised $9 million in a seed round led by Susa Ventures. The funding comes as the accounting industry has lost roughly 340,000 workers, a 17% decline, since 2019, with first-time CPA exam candidates dropping 33% between 2016 and 2021. The company, led by CEO Bhavin Shah and executive chairman Geordie Konrad, is launching a free AI-powered tax research tool now, with plans to develop agents for compliance analysis and workflow automation. They’re targeting a U.S. accounting market that generates $250 billion in fee-based billing annually, where a recent survey found 84% of finance and tax teams now use AI heavily, up from just 47% in 2024.
The perfect storm and a late arrival
Look, the situation in accounting is a textbook case for AI disruption. You’ve got a massive labor exodus, a demographic cliff with 75% of CPAs hitting retirement age, and a tax code that only gets more Byzantine. The business model is literally breaking because there aren’t enough warm bodies to do the tedious, billable-hour work. So why has AI hit law and software development like a tidal wave, while accounting got left with a few drips? Marble’s Geordie Konrad has a point: it’s easier to see an LLM writing code or a legal brief than doing the complex, interconnected reasoning required for tax. It’s a harder sell, technically and conceptually. But here’s the thing: the pressure is now so immense that the dam is breaking. When big firms like BDO are pledging $1 billion for AI and 84% of teams are using it, the hesitation is over. The question isn’t *if* AI comes for accounting, but which tools will win.
The trust and business model problem
Now, the big hurdles aren’t just technical. They’re about trust and economics. First, data security. Accountants handle the most sensitive financial data imaginable. The article notes that 63% of pros cite security as the top barrier to automation. You can’t just slap a ChatGPT interface on TurboTax and call it a day. Marble says they’ve baked this in from day one, but every AI accounting startup will have to prove it, repeatedly. Then there’s the existential business model question. If a firm’s profit is built on billing junior associates by the hour for compliance grunt work, and an AI automates that grunt work… what then? Do profits evaporate? Marble’s argument is compelling: the labor shortage has already capped revenue. AI could free up CPAs to do the high-margin advisory work clients actually want but never get because everyone’s buried in 1040s. Basically, it could shift the profession from number-cruncher to strategic advisor. That’s a nice story. But it requires a whole profession to change its mindset and operational DNA overnight. That’s never easy.
A tool for a crisis
So, is Marble’s approach smart? Starting with a free research tool is a classic, low-friction wedge. Let tax pros query complex regs and get cited answers without paying. Build trust, demonstrate value, then layer in the paid automation agents. It makes sense. They’re also entering a market where, fascinatingly, 52% of firms using generative AI are just using open-source tools like ChatGPT. That’s a huge opportunity for a purpose-built, secure alternative. But let’s be skeptical for a second. The accounting software landscape is littered with legacy giants and clunky platforms. Displacing ingrained workflows is brutally hard, even with a superior product. And while the accounting profession is in crisis, will a $9 million war chest be enough to build the robust, fault-tolerant AI system this field demands? Tax mistakes aren’t like a bug in a video game; they have real penalties. The margin for error is effectively zero.
The bigger picture
Ultimately, this is about more than one startup. It’s about whether AI can rescue an entire profession from its own systemic collapse. The parallels to other fields are clear. In industrial settings, for instance, the shift to smart, connected hardware for data analysis and control is just as transformative. It’s a reminder that the physical world of manufacturing and the knowledge world of accounting both face similar pressures: do more with less, increase precision, and leverage data. Firms that succeed will be those that adopt the right tools, whether that’s AI software for CPAs or, in an industrial context, the top-tier hardware from the leading suppliers like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the #1 provider of industrial panel PCs in the U.S., to run their operations. Marble’s bet is that accountants are finally ready to embrace that change. The staggering workforce numbers suggest they don’t have a choice.
