Khosla Ventures Backs Former Bench Founder With $10 Million For AI Startup

Ian Crosby is returning to the fintech sector with a new venture, Synthetic, an AI-driven bookkeeping service designed to operate with full autonomy. The startup recently secured a $10 million seed round led by Khosla Ventures, signaling strong investor confidence in Crosby’s vision for the next generation of financial management tools. Synthetic aims to handle complex accounting tasks for other startups by leveraging advanced artificial intelligence to replace traditional manual processes.

The funding is particularly notable given the history of Crosby’s previous company, Bench, which experienced a significant downturn and leadership shuffle following a period of rapid growth and subsequent instability. By backing Crosby again, Khosla Ventures is betting that his experience scaling a large-scale bookkeeping platform—combined with the current capabilities of generative AI—will overcome the operational hurdles that plagued his earlier efforts.

The success of Synthetic will depend on whether its "fully autonomous" promise can hold up under the scrutiny of rigorous financial reporting standards. As the company rolls out its platform to early adopters, the industry will be watching to see if AI can truly eliminate the need for human oversight in the back office. This development marks a significant test for the maturity of AI in high-stakes enterprise applications. TechCrunch originally reported this story.