Menlo Ventures leads round backing intelligent assistants that help tax firms scale amid rising workloads and shrinking headcount.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA / ACCESS Newswire / July 10, 2025 / Abacus, the company developing agentic CPA assistants for modern accounting firms, today announced it has raised $6.6 million in seed funding. The round was led by Menlo Ventures, with significant participation from Pear VC and participation from Recall Capital, and Original Capital. The funding will accelerate Abacus’ mission to give CPAs superpowers – turning junior-level preparers into reviewers and bringing Big Four-level automation and efficiency to the entire CPA market. Their intelligent assistants learn firm-specific workflows and take on the rote, high-volume tasks that slow teams down.
Founded by brothers Cody Sugarman (CEO) and Brandon Sugarman (CTO), both engineers from Stanford, Abacus brings an AI-first approach to modernizing how accounting firms operate.
As accounting firms face mounting pressure from shrinking headcount and growing client demands, Abacus helps teams stay efficient, eliminating repetitive manual work while maintaining the precision and control tax firms need.
“With fewer professionals entering the field and workloads rising, the accounting industry is under immense pressure,” said Cody Sugarman. “We’re seeing an explosion of BPO usage, but associates are still working 60+ hour weeks during the busy seasons to meet the April and October deadlines. We’re building software that doesn’t just automate tasks-it works alongside teams, adapts to how they operate, and scales with their complexity. This funding allows us to expand our platform and bring this new category of assistant to more firms across the industry.”
Abacus is starting where the impact is highest: automating data entry, the most expensive and time-consuming task in the tax preparation process. Today, tax associates spend up to 80% of their time on manual rote tasks like data collection and reconciliation, and preparing workpapers before a CPA ever sees the return. With fewer professionals entering the field and increasing pressure on delivery timelines, many firms are turning to offshore teams, paying $30 or more per return and facing long turnaround times during peak season.
“The idea for Abacus came from our own CPA issuing us a ‘7216 consent form’, essentially telling us that the bulk of our tax prep work was going to be offshored,” said Brandon Sugarman. “This sparked a curiosity in the industry and eventually led to our first paying customer.”
The platform automates data collection by pulling from client documents, past returns, and standard forms-no 7216 consent form required-and classifies, reconciles, and pushes data directly into CPA workflows for review and filing. What once took hours of back-and-forth and manual entry can now be done 10x faster and at a fraction of the cost, with no bottlenecks during crunch time.
“Accounting is one of the last major service industries still bogged down by 30-year old legacy systems and manual workflows,” said Croom Beatty, Partner at Menlo Ventures. “With more than half of accountants expected to retire in the next decade, there is an acute need for AI to reshape and improve how modern accounting gets done. Cody and Brandon have a deep understanding of the intricacies and nuances of how accounting firms operate and have built a powerful tax product that allows best in class accounting firms to better serve their end customers.”
Abacus is currently expanding its team and hiring across several roles. Those interested can learn more at getabacus.com or reach out directly to [email protected].
ABOUT ABACUS:
Abacus builds agentic infrastructure for accounting firms. Founded by brothers and Stanford engineers, Cody and Brandon Sugarman, Abacus is rethinking how high-trust industries adopt intelligent software: not through flashy interfaces, but through deeply embedded, domain-specific automation. For more, visit getabacus.com.
MEDIA CONTACT:
Lauren Gill, MAG PR at E: [email protected]; P: 978-473-1362
SOURCE: Abacus
