Emerging from stealth, Glassbox opens its waitlist, available at glassboxfinance.com

February 18, 2025 01:00 PM Eastern Standard Time

TORONTO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Glassbox, a Toronto-based fintech startup, announced today that it has raised $1.2 million in pre-seed funding to reimagine how finance teams work with spreadsheets in the age of AI. The round was led by FinTech Collective (New York) and StandUp Ventures (Toronto), with participation from Watertower Ventures (Los Angeles). The fresh capital will be used to expand Glassbox’s team and bring its AI-compatible financial analysis platform to market.

Glassbox, a Toronto-based fintech startup, announced today that it has raised $1.2 million in pre-seed funding to reimagine how finance teams work with spreadsheets in the age of AI.Post this

For decades, corporate finance workflows have relied on clunky spreadsheets, long hours, and error-prone manual processes. While other industries have begun embracing real-time collaboration tools and AI-powered assistants, finance teams have been left with little more than bigger, more complex Excel files. Glassbox aims to change that.

“Agentic workflows are generating a lot of buzz, but corporate finance remains hindered by manual processes and fragmented, context-poor data trapped in spreadsheets, limiting their potential,” said Allison Harris, Glassbox’s CEO and co-founder. “Our goal is to build smarter, more transparent tools that will truly enable finance professionals to responsibly leverage AI at scale.”

Glassbox’s solution is centered around a new framework it calls FinScript. Rather than building financial models and analysis with traditional spreadsheet formulas, users can input plain text instructions that align with large language models’ (LLMs) capabilities for processing written information. This approach adds context and structure to data and enables faster, more auditable analysis while maintaining compatibility with existing Excel-based processes.

“FinScript bridges the gap between human expertise and LLMs’ power,” said Ian Kennedy, CTO and co-founder. “FinScript transforms complex financial models into simple, auditable instructions, allowing teams to work faster and smarter without compromising on rigor or transparency.”

According to the company, even junior analysts using FinScript can evaluate deals up to five times faster than experienced Excel users. The system also reduces the risk of costly errors, an issue that has long plagued finance teams.

“Finance is uniquely positioned to benefit from AI, but spreadsheets are not built for this shift,” said Brooks Gibbins, co-founder and Managing Partner at FinTech Collective. “You can think of Glassbox as the financial modeling equivalent of GitHub for code management or Notion for content creation – bringing 0-1 structure, traceability, and collaboration to complex financial workflows. By staying fully compatible with Excel, Glassbox enables finance teams to harness the power of AI without disrupting their existing processes.”

The founding team brings deep expertise to the challenge. Harris, who is a Princeton-educated engineer with experience in energy investment banking and derivatives structuring on Wall Street, brings firsthand insight into the inefficiencies of traditional finance workflows. Kennedy, a seasoned engineer and cloud architect with over 15 years of experience, leads technical strategy and development for Glassbox.

“We’re always inspired by founders with deep industry expertise and a personal drive to solve the problems they’ve lived,” explains Michelle McBane, Managing Director at StandUp Ventures. “When Allison shared that she was building the tool she wished had existed during her time in investment banking — and that it would have changed her entire career trajectory — we knew this was a founder and a vision we had to back.”

Glassbox has been operating in stealth mode for the past 18 months, running private beta programs with select industry leaders. The company is now opening its waitlist to a broader audience, with plans to scale distribution later this year.

“The applications of Glassbox are remarkably broad,” Harris noted. “From investment banking and private equity to hedge funds, FP&A, and insurance, Glassbox is designed to maintain flexibility, making it ideal for a wide range of financial analysis use cases.”

With its innovative approach and sophisticated backers, Glassbox is positioning itself as a key player in the emerging field of AI-enabled financial services. The company’s next-gen spreadsheet platform is poised to transform how financial professionals analyze deals, collaborate, and make decisions — all without leaving Excel behind.

Glassbox’s waitlist is now open. Join the waitlist at glassboxfinance.com.

About Glassbox
Founded in 2023 and headquartered in Toronto, Glassbox is on a mission to empower capital markets and investment professionals with cutting-edge tools that deliver unmatched productivity gains, reduce errors, and harness the power of AI. By reinventing the spreadsheet as an AI-compatible platform, Glassbox aims to make financial analysis faster, smarter, and more transparent.

About FinTech Collective
FinTech Collective is a global, early-stage venture capital firm backing entrepreneurs who are rewiring the way money moves through the world. Founded in 2012 with offices in New York City and London, the firm has deep experience investing across capital markets, wealth and asset management, banking, lending, payments, insurance, and DeFi. The managing partners of FinTech Collective met in their mid 20s and helped build, scale, and successfully exit four fintech businesses.

Backed by some of the world’s leading institutional investors, FinTech Collective manages ~$1b in regulatory assets. Over the last decade the firm has had 10 exits, taken one company from pitch deck to public markets and invested in close to 100 portfolio companies including well known firms such as Anyfin in Stockholm, bunch and Mondu in Berlin, Flutterwave in Lagos, IMMO in London, Mattilda in Mexico City, Simetrik in Colombia, and several important businesses in NYC including MoneyLion, NYDIG, Quovo (acquired by Plaid) and Vestwell.

About StandUp Ventures
StandUp Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in high-growth, women-led companies. Founded in 2017, StandUp was built on the belief that top founders are often women and investing in them will drive top returns. With 31 investments and $56M in AUM across two funds, StandUp backs ambitious entrepreneurs solving big problems and scaling enduring businesses, with a focus on category-defining B2B SaaS, AI, digital health, and marketplace companies across North America.

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