Finland-based startup Aibidia has embarked on the next stage of its mission to digitalise international tax as a result of a successful seed funding round of €4.2 million, led by Global Founders Capital and Icebreaker.vc. In addition, the funding programme by Business Finland that supports the most promising Finnish startups, ‘Young Innovative Company’, also took part in the round, providing €1.25 million of the investment.
Aibidia, founded in 2014, is on a mission to digitalise and shape the way the transfer pricing professionals work and live. For those who are unfamiliar, ‘transfer pricing’ is a tax and accounting term, referring to the rules and methods of pricing transactions within and between enterprises under common ownership or control. Its unique digital transfer pricing software combines in-depth legal, tax, economic, AI and business intelligence, to help companies automate and speed up the processes involved.
“The biggest challenge in international taxation relates to transfer pricing. In essence, it boils down to the question of how to ensure a fair and transparent split of the global profit within multinational companies. We help companies solve this challenge. We are offering companies and tax authorities a digital platform that helps define and justify the global profit split while simultaneously automating the burdensome statutory reporting process”, explains Aibidia’s CEO and founder Hannu-Tapani Leppänen.
One of the lead investors in this round, Global Founders Capital, is one of the world’s leading venture capital funds, with an impressive track record of scaling category-defining startups into global success stories. Their portfolio includes renowned companies such as Slack, Revolut, LinkedIn and DeliveryHero. The other venture capital firm leading the round, Icebreaker.vc, is known for supporting early stage Nordic technology startups.
“Aibidia have taken a first-principles approach to revolutionizing the work of transfer pricing compliance, the largest tax compliance category for the world’s biggest corporations. Leveraging years of experience in the field, the Aibidia team has created a way for multi-national corporations to thrive in an environment of ever-increasing demands and regulation from both local and global regulators. Automating a vast portion of compliance workflows and documentation creation, Aibidia saves thousands of hours of manual work while increasing control, transparency and compliance assurance – critically reducing the risk of costly tax adjustments. We are thrilled to work with Aibidia on the road ahead to build an industry-defining company.”, says Philippe Klintefelt Collet, Partner, Global Founders Capital.
“International taxation is an important topic where the structure of our societies in terms of taxation and what companies can actually get done are at odds. Companies are spending €150 billion per year on this which is wasted. Hannu-Tapani and the team know the ins-and-outs of this problem and are very passionate about solving this inefficiency with technology. It is exactly what we look for: large global markets, domain expertise, great technology. And passion!” says Riku Seppälä, General Partner, Icebreaker.vc.
Simultaneous to this announcement, the company is also announcing its collaboration with two internationally acknowledged thought leaders and digitalisation proponents in transfer pricing. Ketan Patel is the Global Head of Tax Technology at Morgan Stanley and is joining Aibidia’s advisory board, and Brigitte Baumgartner, who has a long experience in EU and national level transfer pricing regulation, is partnering with Aibidia in the company’s expansion to Central Europe.
”We could not be in a better situation: we have a dedicated team supported by the forerunners in transfer pricing digitalisation and extremely competent VCs. We have very ambitious plans and, now, also the means to disrupt the field of transfer pricing and international taxation.”, states Hannu-Tapani Leppänen.
