San Francisco-based Synthetic said it has raised a US$10-million seed round from investors including Tobi Lütke and former Shopify chief operating officer Kaz Nejatian. Khosla Ventures led the round for Synthetic, founded by Ian Crosby, the former CEO of the now-defunct Vancouver startup Bench Accounting. (The Logic)

Talking point: Bench shut down suddenly in 2024, and Lütke was among the critics who said that ousting Crosby in 2021 was the firm’s death knell. Crosby’s new firm, Synthetic, aims to build a “truly autonomous AI” that’s better than a human bookkeeper and “doesn’t take vacation,” with the assumption that the “human-staffed model” of bookkeeping will hit a ceiling. Still, Crosby said he isn’t “sure if it’s yet technologically possible to make this work,” and that the firm won’t release a product without extensive quality control because AI is “notoriously unreliable.” Synthetic, meanwhile, requires its employees to work in-office six days per week.