Klarna Vets’ Galdera Raises $1.7 Million for AI Financial Modeling

Galdera, a financial modeling startup founded by veterans of Klarna, is debuting with $1.7 million in pre-seed funding.

The company, whose name comes from the Basque word for “question,” announced its new funding last week, saying its experiences had shown that creating a quality financial model involves more than just projecting the next quarter’s earnings.

“Best-in-class modeling must represent two things at once: a statistical ground truth that shows where trends lead, and transparent assumptions that convey executive intent. All while maintaining version control and audit traceability,” the company said.

“Artificial intelligence presents an opportunity to take this concept one level further. The financial model itself becomes institutional memory: context built for finance teams and the agents supporting them.”

The company’s funding round was led by J12 Ventures, with participation from Antler along with Klarna, Stripe, DeepL and Plata.

“The Galdera team has already built a powerful modeling engine in one of Europe’s most demanding financial environments,” said Emmet King, partner at J12.

“Now they’re pushing the frontier of how AI — built on a strong foundation of data, memory and context — can transform how companies plan, forecast and grow. They’re building with real ambition and craft, and we’re delighted to support them.”

Research by PYMNTS Intelligence, from the report “What Happens When CFOs Get Serious About Gen AI,” found that financial reporting is one of the core finance functions in which chief financial officers (CFOs) are embedding generative AI.

Among the 10 finance processes covered in the report, financial reporting was the one CFOs rated as most important, with nearly 87% of finance chiefs saying the technology was a key part of financial reporting.

Meanwhile, almost one-third of CFOs interviewed by PYMNTS predicted that AI will have a high impact on producing real-time forecasts and “what-if” simulations, with many more (40%) said they were seeing only a moderate impact.

“Folks are just starting to understand that AI isn’t just automation with ‘kind of sexier’ marketing,” Finexio CEO and Founder Ernest Rolfson said in an interview with PYMNTS in December. “Embracing it as infrastructure lets you use your data as a strategic asset.”

Another PYMNTS Intelligence report found that 83.3% of surveyed CFOs were planning to use at least one AI tool to improve their cash flow cycles.

“In this environment, the distinction between operational efficiency and revenue generation becomes less pronounced,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this month. “Financial infrastructure, long regarded as a cost of doing business, may emerge as a primary instrument for sustaining it.”