The financial software company behind TurboTax, QuickBooks, Credit Karma and Mailchimp - now rebuilding itself around AI.
The MarkIntuit's wordmark, unveiled in a 2022 refresh - the same four letters that have traveled from Quicken floppy disks to AI agents inside QuickBooks.
In 1983, Scott Cook sat at his kitchen table watching his wife struggle to balance the family checkbook and decided there had to be a better way. That frustration became Intuit - and more than forty years later, its software quietly runs inside the financial lives of roughly 100 million people and businesses.
Intuit is not a household name in the way its products are. Most people know TurboTax at tax time, QuickBooks if they run a business, Credit Karma when they check a credit score, and Mailchimp when they send a newsletter. Fewer realize all four belong to the same company - a financial technology firm headquartered in Mountain View, California, and traded on the Nasdaq under the ticker INTU.
What Intuit sells is the removal of friction from money. Its customers are individual tax filers, gig workers, freelancers, and the millions of small and mid-sized businesses whose owners never wanted to become accountants. The problems it solves are stubbornly universal: filing taxes without dread, keeping the books straight, getting paid on time, understanding your credit, and finding new customers.
The first product, Quicken, was written by co-founder Tom Proulx in a Stanford dorm room. It let ordinary people manage a checkbook on a personal computer. From there, Intuit expanded into small-business accounting with QuickBooks in 1992 and consumer tax with TurboTax in 1993, going public the same year.
That three-product core held for decades. Then, starting in 2020, Intuit spent roughly $20 billion on two acquisitions - Credit Karma and Mailchimp - that reshaped what the company is. It was no longer just taxes and bookkeeping. It was trying to own the full financial stack for consumers and small businesses, from the first invoice to the credit decision to the marketing email that finds the next customer.
Intuit reports its business in two segments - Consumer and Global Business Solutions - but customers experience it as four distinct brands.
Cloud accounting, payroll, payments and invoicing for small and mid-sized businesses. The engine of the Global Business Solutions segment, where online accounting revenue grew 22% in a single recent quarter.
Consumer and self-employed tax preparation, including TurboTax Live, which pairs the software with human tax experts. Earns the bulk of its revenue in the four months around US tax season.
Free credit monitoring and personal finance, offering scores, loans, cards and insurance recommendations. Acquired for $8.1 billion, it brought a large consumer base into the fold.
Email marketing and customer relationship tools for small businesses. Acquired for roughly $12 billion to help Intuit customers not just run their books but grow their revenue.
There must be a better way.
Scott Cook, on watching his wife balance the checkbook, 1983Plenty of companies are bolting generative AI onto existing products. Intuit's bet is structural: it built GenOS, an in-house AI operating system, and layered a customer-facing assistant on top.
That assistant is Intuit Assist - a generative-AI financial helper embedded across TurboTax and QuickBooks. It can draft invoices, flag potential cash-flow shortfalls in real time, suggest actions, and answer plain-language questions about a business's finances. The strategy Intuit describes is a "system of intelligence" that combines its enormous store of permissioned financial data, its AI models, and access to human experts.
The differentiation is less about any single feature and more about the data moat underneath it. Because Intuit already holds the tax returns, the books, and the credit profiles - with customer permission - the next AI feature it ships is often the obvious one. Rivals that rely solely on third-party models, Intuit argues, cannot match that combination of proprietary data and lower deployment cost.
The transition has a hard edge. In May 2026, alongside raising its revenue outlook, Intuit announced it was cutting roughly 17% of its workforce - more than 3,000 roles - eliminating redundant positions after integrating TurboTax and Credit Karma and pulling back on parts of Mailchimp. Growth and layoffs in the same breath is the uncomfortable signature of an AI-first reset.
Where Intuit fits in the market is at the intersection of three fights: cloud accounting against Xero and FreshBooks, tax against H&R Block and free government filing, and payroll against ADP and Paychex. Its edge is that few competitors play in all of those arenas at once, and none hold the same cross-product data.
* FY2026 figure is company guidance, not a final result. Bars scaled for illustration.
Most of Intuit's revenue is recurring software-as-a-service. QuickBooks Online and Mailchimp bill on subscriptions that arrive steadily all year. TurboTax works on a freemium model - free simple filings, paid tiers for complex returns, and premium fees for TurboTax Live's human experts - concentrated in the spring.
On top of subscriptions sit transactional fees: payments processing and payroll runs through QuickBooks, and referral or lead-generation fees on Credit Karma, where lenders and card issuers pay to reach matched consumers. The pairing of seasonal TurboTax with year-round QuickBooks is deliberate portfolio design - one smooths the other's calendar.
That mix gives Intuit both predictable recurring revenue and high-margin transactional upside, funding the heavy investment its AI reinvention requires.
Scott Cook and Tom Proulx found Intuit in Palo Alto and ship Quicken, born from balancing a checkbook.
Intuit goes public on Nasdaq as INTU and expands into consumer tax preparation.
QuickBooks becomes the leading small-business accounting software in the US.
The longtime executive takes the top job, later adding the chairman title.
Intuit buys Credit Karma for $8.1B, adding a large consumer-finance base.
Intuit acquires the marketing platform for roughly $12B to serve small-business growth.
The company introduces its generative-AI assistant across QuickBooks and TurboTax.
Intuit acquires GoCo, Deserve talent and Relevvo, and closes FY2025 at $18.8B revenue.
Intuit raises FY2026 guidance toward $21.3B while cutting ~17% of staff to reorganize around AI.
Chairman and CEO Sasan Goodarzi, who took the top job in 2019, now leads the AI transition. Co-founder Scott Cook remains chairman of the executive committee - and his research ritual still shapes the culture.
Intuit is known for "follow me home" research, a practice Cook championed in which employees observe real customers using products in their own kitchens and offices, rather than relying on surveys. It is a small habit that explains a lot: the company's durability has come from repeatedly noticing friction in ordinary tasks and removing it.
The firm has appeared repeatedly on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For. Before its 2026 reduction, Intuit employed roughly 18,000 people across engineering, tax and accounting expertise, design, and data science.
We are building an AI-driven expert platform - a system of intelligence that pairs data, AI and human expertise.
Sasan Goodarzi, Chairman and CEOA starting point for seeing Intuit's leadership and products in action.
Intuit builds financial software for consumers and small businesses, including TurboTax (taxes), QuickBooks (accounting), Credit Karma (consumer credit) and Mailchimp (marketing).
Intuit was founded in 1983 in Palo Alto, California by Scott Cook and Tom Proulx, initially to sell the Quicken personal-finance program.
Sasan Goodarzi has been Chairman and CEO of Intuit since 2019. Co-founder Scott Cook remains chairman of the executive committee.
Mainly through software subscriptions (QuickBooks, Mailchimp), seasonal TurboTax fees, payments and payroll processing, and referral fees on Credit Karma financial products.
Yes. Intuit has traded on the Nasdaq under the ticker INTU since its 1993 IPO and reported $18.8B in revenue for fiscal year 2025.