Eighteen year old solo founder takes on the CPA workforce crisis with agentic AI

MIAMI — April 23, 2026 — Maxed, an AI operating system for CPA firms, today announced an $850,000 pre-seed round led by Focal VC, with participation from Akshay Kothari, co-founder of Notion.

CPA firms today run on a tangle of expensive, disconnected tools – and still drown in manual work. Maxed replaces that stack with a single AI-native platform, delivering best-in-class infrastructure at a fraction of the cost and letting firms serve more clients without adding headcount.

At the core of Maxed are two AI agents that work in tandem to eliminate the repetitive admin that eats up most of a firm’s billable hours.

Max is the back-office engine. It runs the workflows that normally require constant manual oversight today: Max monitors activity across the platform and keeps work moving without staff having to coordinate every handoff.

Ed is the client-facing counterpart, engaging clients directly through the firm’s branded portal. With Ed, accountants can scale their customer communication while every message remains visible to the firm, and nothing goes out without approval – keeping accountants fully in control of each relationship.

“Most CPA firms are stuck chasing missing documents, following up on clients, and moving data between systems that were never built to work together,” said Fifi Siddiqui, CEO & founder of Maxed. “A lot of new AI tools are just layered on top of the same fragmented stack, which means the manual work doesn’t really disappear. I built Maxed as a unified system so the workflows themselves can be automated end-to-end. The firms that adopt AI now will leave the rest behind. Maxed is how they get there.”

“All of knowledge work is being rebuilt around AI agents, and accounting is one of the largest and most underserved spaces ripe for disruption. We’ve met hundreds of founders going after AI in professional services. Fifi stood out immediately – she understands the space more clearly and at just eighteen, she’s already building faster than teams three times her size. We think Maxed is going to define what a modern accounting firm looks like and we’re thrilled to be working on this together with Fifi.” said Pascal Unger, co-founder and Managing Partner at Focal VC.

“What stood out to me about Fifi wasn’t just her technical ability, but her instinct for building systems that solve real problems,” said Akshay Kothari. “The next generation of AI innovation will come from founders who think in terms of workflows and agents, not just standalone models. Fifi represents that shift, and it’s exciting to see her already building with that level of clarity and ambition.”

The round will fund further product expansion and broad adoption across the industry. The platform is currently in beta and accepting requests for early access.

About Maxed

Maxed is the AI operating system for CPA firms, replacing the fragmented, expensive software stack accounting firms are locked into with a single platform powered by AI agents. By automating the manual work that holds firms back, Maxed helps them serve more clients with the same team – at a fraction of the cost while freeing billable hours that would otherwise be lost to administrative work. Maxed is headquartered in Miami and currently in beta with early design partners. Learn more at www.maxed.life

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