Berlin's mika Raises $6.5M to Take On Germany's Tax Giants

Jan de Vries · 2026-09-23

Germany has a reputation for many things — engineering, beer, punctuality. But if you've ever tried to start a small company there, you know the real national pastime: paperwork. And one Berlin startup just raised serious money to kill it. ### The Raise mika, a Berlin-based vertical AI startup, has closed a $6.5 million Seed round (€6 million) to scale its AI-native alternative to the traditional tax firm. The round was led by Smedvig Ventures, with participation from Basel-based family office Wecken & Cie. (Care4 AG). Angels joining the round include Dennis Bemmann and Michael Brehm (co-founders of studiVZ), Johannes Ditterich (limango founder), and Martina Pfeifer (encourageventures). Existing backers Keen Venture Partners and Dutch Founders Fund also increased their stakes. Back in 2024, mika had raised roughly $870,000 (€800k) in pre-Seed funding. ### Why Germany, Why Now Here's the thing about Germany: accounting and tax are so tightly linked that a single wrong entry can flow straight through to your tax bill. That's not a small problem — it's the reason big international accounting players never really cracked the market, and why small businesses were left with few real options. > "Nowhere else in Europe is accounting and tax as demanding or costly for small businesses as in Germany," said Freddie Kalfayan, Principal at Smedvig Ventures. "mika is the first to build for this reality instead of around it." ### What mika Actually Does Founded in 2022 and realigned under new management in 2024, mika is led by Agnieszka Walorska (founder and CEO), Luke Linnekuhle (CFO), and Henry Müssemann (CTO). Rather than digitizing the old tax-firm model, the team rebuilt accounting, tax, and finance from scratch as an AI-native financial operating system for SMEs. For GmbHs and their smaller cousin, the UG, mika handles: - Ongoing bookkeeping - VAT returns - Annual accounts - Tax filings Behind the scenes sits a proprietary AI-native general ledger built specifically for German accounting rules. The AI reads receipts, categorizes transactions, and explains what each entry means — usually with zero human input. Trained in-house accountants still check the work and jump in when things get complicated. ### Talking to Your Own Numbers One feature a traditional tax firm simply can't offer: you can ask your own financial data questions directly. Through mika or via the Model Context Protocol (MCP) in assistants like ChatGPT or Claude, users can query their accounts in plain language. Got a confusing letter from the tax office? Upload it, and mika explains what it says and what to do next. Individual tax advice isn't included yet — for that, mika leans on licensed tax advisers in its network. ### The Bigger Picture Walorska put the mission bluntly: "The moment you start a GmbH in Germany, you're told you need a tax adviser. Some founders even think it's a legal requirement. At mika, we use AI to tear down that barrier, so your bank balance no longer decides who gets to start a company." For anyone watching European startup incorporation trends, this is one to keep an eye on. If mika can make German bureaucracy feel less like a wall, it won't just be founders celebrating — it'll be every small business owner who ever dreaded opening a tax letter.