Filed, an AI-powered tax software startup, has just raised $17.2 million to tackle one of accounting’s biggest headaches—manual tax prep. The round was led by Northzone, with backing from Day One Ventures and Neo.
CEO and co-founder Leroy Kerry says the tax industry is in crisis. As experienced CPAs near retirement, fewer young professionals are stepping in to replace them. At the same time, many firms still rely on outdated, paper-heavy systems. This makes it tough to keep up with demand, let alone grow.
Kerry saw an opportunity to fix that. He teamed up with CTO Atul Ramachandran to build Filed—software that uses AI to automate the entire tax return process. Their system reads documents, applies each firm’s unique tax strategies, and enters the data into existing tools. When human input is needed, the AI flags the task for review, keeping professionals in control.
While tools like Black Ore and Basis exist, Kerry says Filed stands out. It was designed from day one specifically for tax workflows. And unlike other platforms, Filed integrates directly with firms’ current software, so there’s no need to rip and replace.
For Kerry, the journey is personal. He grew up in South London, raised by a single mother in public housing. Becoming a CEO wasn’t something he imagined back then. But after studying architecture and working in sales, he joined a startup that later became a unicorn. That experience pulled him into the tech world—and eventually brought him to the U.S. to build Filed.
He and his team went straight to the source. They sat in small tax offices in Colorado and Arizona, watching professionals juggle faxes, forms, and paperwork. That insight helped shape the product’s core features.
Filed will use the new funding to grow its team, especially on the engineering side. The goal? Build AI infrastructure that supports more than just tax returns. Kerry envisions a future where Filed helps with everything from audits to document management and client collaboration.
“The industry has waited long enough for its AI breakthrough,” he says. “Filed is here to deliver it.”
