Berlin is home to a lot of fintech startups, but mika is going after something pretty specific: the mess of accounting and tax rules German small businesses deal with every single year. And investors just backed that idea with real money.
The Funding Details
Berlin-based vertical AI startup mika has raised €6 million in a seed round led by pan-European investor Smedvig Ventures. The round closed on September 23, 2026. Founded in 2024, mika works in the accounting, tax, fintech, and business services space.
A few other names joined the round too. Basel-based family office Wecken & Cie. (through Care4 AG) took part, along with individual investors Dennis Bemmann and Michael Brehm (known for studiVZ), Johannes Ditterich (limango), and Martina Pfeifer (encourageventures). On top of that, existing investors Keen Venture Partners and Dutch Founders Fund put in more money too, increasing their stakes. So this isn’t just new money coming in – old backers are doubling down, which usually says something good about how the company is doing.
This isn’t mika’s first check either. Back in 2024, the company had already raised €800k in a pre-seed round, led by Samen Slimmer, a group made up of Keen Venture Partners, DFF, and Slimmer AI. So with this new seed round, total funding sits around €6.8 million.
What Problem Is mika Actually Solving?
Here’s the thing about Germany: if you start a small company there (a GmbH or a UG), you basically get told right away that you need a tax adviser. Some founders even think it’s a legal requirement, even though it’s not always true. “The moment you start a GmbH in Germany, you’re told you need a tax adviser. It goes so far that some founders think it’s a legal requirement,” said Agnieszka Walorska, founder and CEO of mika.
And honestly, that makes sense why this is a problem worth solving. Germany has almost one million small incorporated businesses, most of them GmbHs and UGs, and all of them are required to keep accounts and file taxes. That’s a huge market of people paying for something that, in theory, software could handle a lot of.
mika built its platform to be an AI-first alternative to hiring a traditional tax firm. It’s not just digitizing old paperwork – the company is building accounting and tax processes for small businesses from the ground up, designed around AI instead of just adding AI on top of old systems.
How the Platform Works
So what does mika actually do day to day? Quite a lot, it turns out.
Its general ledger reads receipts and payments, sorts transactions into categories, and puts together bookkeeping, VAT returns, annual accounts, and tax filings. Basically the stuff a bookkeeper or accountant would normally chip away at manually.
But – and this is a smart move – mika doesn’t try to remove humans from the picture completely. Trained accountants review what the AI produces and step in for the tricky cases, while licensed tax advisers in mika’s network handle actual individual tax advice. So the AI does the repetitive grunt work, and people stay in charge of anything that needs real judgment. That’s probably the right call, since a mistake on a German tax filing isn’t something you want an algorithm guessing on alone.
It also helps with the small, annoying stuff. If a user gets a confusing letter from the tax office, they can upload it and mika explains it right away, plus tells them what to do next. It can also answer questions about a user’s own finances and accounts. One thing it doesn’t do yet, though: individual tax advice isn’t part of the offering – for that, mika still points customers to licensed tax advisers in its network.
Who’s Actually Using It
The growth numbers are pretty solid for a company this young. At the start of the year, mika had around 400 GmbHs and UGs using the platform. Now there are more than 750. That’s nearly doubling in under a year.
mika started out serving digital-first service businesses like agencies and consultancies. Since then, customers have expanded into SaaS, property, and e-commerce, with retail and skilled trades being the newest industries to sign on. And on the revenue side, the company says revenue has been climbing more than 20 percent every month. That’s a fast pace, though it’s worth remembering that percentage growth looks bigger when you’re starting from a smaller base.
Why Investors Are Interested
One investor summed up why Germany specifically is such a fitting market for this kind of product. “Nowhere else in Europe is accounting and tax as demanding or costly for small businesses as in Germany, where the two are so tightly linked that a single mistake carries straight through to the tax bill,” said Freddie Kalfayan, Principal at Smedvig Ventures. “It is the reason big international players never gained a foothold here, and why SMEs were left with no real alternative.”
That’s actually a fair point – the tight link between accounting and tax filing in Germany makes it a harder market to enter than most, but also one where a good product can really stand out once it works.
Who’s Behind mika
mika was founded by Agnieszka Walorska, Lukas Linnekuhle, and Henry Müssemann. Walorska serves as CEO, with Linnekuhle as co-founder and CFO, and Müssemann as co-founder and CTO.
The company isn’t working completely alone in this space either. Other players like Candis have raised around $30 million automating accounts-payable work for mid-sized companies, and Accountable has raised close to $19 million serving freelancers – though mika is aiming specifically at incorporated small businesses, the GmbHs and UGs, rather than freelancers or bigger companies. That’s a pretty narrow lane, but given how big and confusing German small business tax is, there’s clearly room for more than one player.