Inscope Raises $14.5M to Automate Financial Reporting With AI

From Spreadsheet Fatigue to a Funded Startup

Inscope was born from frustration. Co-founders Mary Antony and Kelsey Gootnick, both certified public accountants, first met seven years ago at logistics giant Flexport. Gootnick served as the company's controller and Antony as assistant controller. They stayed in touch even after Antony moved to Miro and Gootnick went to Hopin and later Thrive Global.

No matter where they worked, the same pain followed them.

In 2023, the pair teamed up with CTO Jared Tibshraeny to launch Inscope and tackle that mess head on. The company raised a $4.3 million seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners that same year, bringing its total funding to date to $18.8 million.

What Inscope Actually Does

Inscope embeds intelligence directly into the financial reporting workflow. It helps teams draft, roll forward, review, and validate financial statements while maintaining full audit trails and change control.

The platform does not yet fully automate the generation of income statements and balance sheets. But it handles a massive share of the manual busywork that eats up reporting cycles — tasks like verifying math, ensuring dollar signs and commas are uniform, and tracking changes across versions. Simply fixing formatting inconsistencies can save accountants up to 20% of their time, according to Antony.

Growth Numbers That Got Investors' Attention

Over the past 12 months, Inscope has grown its customer base by more than five times and increased annual recurring revenue by over 30 times. The startup is now onboarding several Top 100 accounting firms that support thousands of client engagements, including CohnReznick, currently ranked in the top 15 nationally.

Norwest partner Sean Jacobsohn said he invested after hearing from multiple clients that the product saves them significant time. He is convinced Inscope stands out because few founders possess the specific expertise required to rethink financial reporting technology. Jacobsohn will join the board and plans to tap Norwest's broader network of CFO-focused portfolio companies to accelerate growth.

Why AI Fits Financial Reporting

The financial reporting category is especially well suited for AI-driven automation. It relies on unstructured data, judgment-heavy workflows, and the repetitive, year-over-year nature of statement preparation and review.

Legacy platforms like Workiva and Donnelley Financial Solutions have tried to digitize reporting for years. But according to Norwest, those incumbents layered complexity onto outdated workflows rather than rethinking them from the ground up.

Inscope is part of a broader wave of AI adoption sweeping through finance departments. Goldman Sachs is testing autonomous AI agents for accounting and compliance work. A recent report found that nearly half of CFOs now face board-level pressure to deploy AI across operations. Agentic AI tools in accounts payable are already delivering an average return on investment of 80%, up from 67% for general AI projects.

A Risk-Averse Profession Warms Up

Accountants are not the typical startup demographic. Antony describes the profession as risk averse, and she acknowledges it may be a while before practitioners feel fully comfortable letting AI automate statement preparation.

But the founders' own background gives them credibility with buyers. Both Antony and Gootnick developed their entrepreneurial instincts through years of operating inside fast-paced, high-growth companies.

With the fresh capital, Inscope plans to expand its engineering team and push into more complex reporting requirements across larger organizations, using Norwest's CFO-focused portfolio network to accelerate enterprise go-to-market.

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