Brex Inc. and artificial intelligence accounting platform Puzzle announced Tuesday a partnership that reduces startup accounting setup from a weeks-long process to a single click, addressing what executives describe as a critical but often overlooked barrier to startup success.
The integration, available immediately to Brex's more than 30,000 customers, allows founders to establish complete accounting systems directly within their existing Brex dashboard without switching platforms or manual data entry. The partnership marks Brex's evolution from a corporate credit card provider to a comprehensive financial operating system for growing businesses.
"What we saw time and time again is that founders don't connect an ERP—not because they don't want to, but because they don't have one," said Jason Mok, VP and General Manager at Brex, in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat. "And the reason they don't have one is because it's such a laborious process to get an ERP, set it up, create your general ledger accounts, write rules, and so on."
The partnership addresses a persistent pain point in the startup ecosystem: while founders can quickly establish banking relationships and obtain corporate credit cards, setting up proper accounting systems has remained a complex, expensive process that many defer until it becomes critical for fundraising or compliance.
How startups have struggled with expensive, time-consuming accounting setup for decades
Traditionally, startup accounting setup required founders to interview multiple bookkeepers, navigate sales processes, obtain quotes, and grant access to financial credentials across various platforms — a process that typically took four to six weeks and cost upward of $5,000 monthly just to get started, according to Puzzle CEO Sasha Orloff.
"There are two conversations I have almost daily," Orloff explained in a sit-down interview with VentureBeat. "One is with first-time founders who ask, 'Why is accounting important?' The other is with second-time founders who say, 'I get it. Set me up.'"
The timing problem proves particularly acute because accounting becomes essential precisely when startups need it most urgently — during fundraising rounds, tax season, or acquisition discussions.
"Bad accounting will lower your valuation, or completely derail a deal," Orloff said. "By the time you need to clean books, it's already too late."
Inside the AI-powered technology that makes instant accounting integration possible
The technical foundation for the partnership rests on APIs that Brex developed specifically to enable such integrations — infrastructure that previously didn't exist in traditional banking.
"Brex wrote the API to enable this to happen," Orloff explained. "There wasn't an API for credit cards, there wasn't an API for banks. There wasn't an API for Treasury. There wasn't an API for reimbursements. There wasn't an API for invoicing. This just didn't exist."
When a Brex customer clicks the accounting tab in their dashboard and selects Puzzle, the system automatically creates a Puzzle account, maps expense categories to the appropriate general ledger accounts, and begins syncing transaction data in real-time. The integration includes metadata like receipts, memos, and transaction context that enables AI-powered categorization and compliance checking.
Puzzle's AI system can provide what Orloff calls different "modes" of financial analysis — including "Steve Jobs mode" for direct feedback, "VC mode" for investor presentations, or "friendly mode" for positive reinforcement during challenging periods.
"In the privacy of your own browser, you can ask, 'Tell me what I'm doing well and what I'm doing poorly,'" Orloff said. "There's this emotional fear when you're a founder—'I don't really know accounting, I don't know how to speak finance'—but now we can deliver those insights to you through AI."
Why both companies see founder success as the key to their own growth strategies
The partnership reflects aligned business models where both companies benefit from startup success. Brex generates more revenue as companies grow and spend more, while Puzzle's automated accounting becomes more valuable as transaction volumes increase.
Mok, whose career spans Silicon Valley Bank, Andreessen Horowitz, and now Brex, emphasized the strategic importance of solving founder problems before they become critical.
"We want to solve a founder's problems today, and we want to solve problems before they happen," Mok said. "That will earn loyalty, and it takes a lot of trust, ambition, and foresight on our end to say, 'I'm going to solve this problem before they even realize it's a problem.'"
The integration launched to early access users last week, with Mok reporting 21-22 signups within the first 24 hours through organic adoption alone.
How Brex is building a financial operating system to compete with traditional banking
The partnership comes as Brex continues expanding beyond its corporate credit card origins into a comprehensive financial platform. Recent partnerships include travel booking with Navan and procurement with Zip, signaling the company's broader ambitions to become what Mok calls a "financial operating system."
Unlike traditional accounting software that requires companies to migrate between platforms as they grow — from Excel to QuickBooks to NetSuite — both Brex and Puzzle are designed to scale with companies from incorporation through significant revenue milestones. Puzzle currently serves companies generating up to $35 million in annual revenue.
The accounting software market has long been characterized by fragmentation, with different solutions targeting different business stages. This partnership attempts to solve what Orloff describes as an industry anomaly.
"When you look at the accounting market, that's just not a thing—there's no option to scale from startup to large company on a single platform," Orloff said. "If you're a very small company, you might use Excel or Xero. As you grow into a real business, you move to QuickBooks. When you become successful, you switch to NetSuite.”
What real-time financial data could mean for startup success rates and venture capital
The broader implications extend beyond operational convenience. According to both executives, proper accounting setup from day one could fundamentally improve startup success rates by providing founders with real-time financial visibility instead of monthly summaries.
"What if we could prove together that this partnership helps make startups more successful, just the function of having daily understanding of your financial health?" Orloff said. "What if we could teach you through software and AI and design that we can help make your business better?"
The partnership also reflects evolving expectations in the fintech sector, where companies increasingly seek to reduce friction through integration rather than building every capability in-house.
"The thing we've learned at Brex over time is lean into the things you're really good at, and then enable others and empower others, and partner with others where they have their strong suit," Mok explained.
For the venture capital ecosystem, the development could prove significant if it enables more accurate financial reporting from portfolio companies and reduces the due diligence burden during funding rounds.
The integration reflects a broader bet that removing friction from essential business processes creates competitive advantages that extend far beyond individual transactions. As Mok put it, using a passport metaphor: "It's something you know you eventually need. You may or may not need it right now. It's a pain in the ass to get done, and you can build so much gratitude upfront if you remove that friction."
For founders who have experienced the anxiety of managing finances on spreadsheets while trying to build companies, automated, AI-powered accounting from day one is more than operational efficiency—it's a fundamental shift in how startups approach financial management from inception.
"It was so fucking hard when I started my first two companies," Orloff said, "and now it's literally not — if you can't click on a website, like, click a screen like, that's on you."
