The AI that does tax season's dirty work - so accountants don't have to.
SORABAN - Named for the Japanese abacus. It doesn't replace the accountant; it makes the counting faster. Photographed here as it appears on a firm's login screen at 11 p.m. in April.
Here is a fact about accounting firms that sounds made up but isn't: somewhere between 40% and 60% of the workweek is unbillable. It is spent chasing documents, re-typing numbers from a client's bank statement into tax software, and sending the fourth polite reminder that yes, the firm still needs last year's K-1. Nobody bills for this. Everybody has to do it.
Soraban is a company built entirely around that unglamorous middle. It is an AI-native tax workflow platform - which is a tidy way of saying it automates the parts of running an accounting firm that no partner went to school to do. The founder, Enoch Ko, is a software engineer who also happened to own an accounting firm, which means he did not discover this problem in a market-sizing spreadsheet. He discovered it in April, repeatedly, until he decided to write code about it.
The name is a nod to the soroban, the Japanese abacus. This is a more honest metaphor than most startups pick. The abacus did not replace the accountant. It made the counting faster and left the judgment to the human. Soraban is making a version of the same bet with modern AI: automate the mechanical work, deskill the drudgery that used to require a full-time admin, and let the licensed professionals spend their hours on things that actually require a license.
Soraban breaks the job into four steps that move a client from "please send us your documents" to "signed, paid, filed." Each one attacks a stage where firms normally lose hours or hire help.
Automated client document intake - the reminders, the follow-ups, the chasing - handled without an admin sending them one at a time.
Workpaper preparation tied back to the source documents, so the numbers trace to where they came from.
Extracts client data straight into tax software - UltraTax CS, Intuit Lacerte, Drake Tax, CCH Axcess - so nobody re-types a 1099.
E-signature and payment processing for the finished return, closing the loop the client actually sees.
There is a certain kind of AI product that demos beautifully in a quiet conference room and then quietly falls over the moment it meets real work. Tax season is the opposite of a quiet conference room. It is a fixed deadline, a flood of documents, and a client base that responds to email whenever it feels like it. Soraban's real credential is that it has now been through six of these - tax years 2020 through 2025 - and kept working.
That durability is the pitch to firms, and it showed up in a customer story the company likes to tell: a firm lost key admin staff and held its client volume anyway, because the software absorbed the work the departing staff used to do. That is the quiet, non-dramatic promise of automation done right. Fewer fires. Not fewer people who matter.
Illustrative split based on the company's stated 40-60% "unbillable" framing. Not audited figures.
"Soraban rebuilds the back office from the client's point of view."
Enoch Ko starts Soraban; the company goes through YC's Winter 2021 batch.
Raises an estimated ~$4.4M from investors including Village Global, AZ-VC and PHX Ventures.
Product broadens into workpaper prep, tax-software data extraction, and e-sign/payment delivery.
Closes its Series A in August to scale automation across more firm workflows.
Vivek Chopra joins in October to lead post-Series A growth.
Soraban's funding story is deliberately unflashy - a seed round, then a Series A led by a growth-minded firm known for long holding periods. Amounts for the A were not disclosed; YC lists roughly $18M raised to date.
| Round | Amount | Date | Lead / Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed | ~$4.4M (est.) | May 2023 | Village Global, AZ-VC, Friale, PHX Ventures |
| Series A | Undisclosed | Aug 2025 | Altos Ventures (lead) |
Figures compiled from public reporting (YC, PR Newswire, Crunchbase, Latka). Seed amount and revenue are third-party estimates.
"The industry is hitting a wall. Soraban has already gone through five tax seasons and is powering over 300 firms."
Product walkthroughs and founder interviews - search directly for the latest, as Soraban regularly posts demos.