Molly Liu and Aman Puri are tackling the U.S. accounting shortage from another angle — a global one, that is. On Monday, they announced that their AI-powered talent marketplace Mavi, founded in 2023, has officially emerged from stealth. The service helps connect and onboard U.S. companies with top AI-proficient global financial and accounting talent within days.
Speaking to TechCrunch, Liu, the company’s co-CEO, pointed out the problems facing the U.S. accounting industry today — mainly that the profession is shrinking and even those left aren’t necessarily fluent in the AI skills needed to help their enterprises grow. At the same time, she said, many U.S. companies don’t like the idea of working with global talent, either because it’s complex to hire and manage them or because they don’t think the talent is good enough.
Liu has worked at Ramp, Lyft, and Dropbox.
In fact, she said, she’s noticed that the more AI tools a company adopts, the more pressure that adds to those in senior roles.
An AI-proficient accountant, for example, is someone with strong finance and accounting fundamentals, she said, but who can also direct AI tools to do work, apply judgment to catch what AI gets wrong; someone who can integrate LLMs into finance and accounting workflows and is familiar with the latest AI-native ERPs and tools.
Last year, the company raised a $4 million seed round led by Harlem Capital, which it had not announced until Monday.
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