Two Ex-Adyen Engineers Build a €7 Million Fintech for AI Startups

Gabriel Ferraz processed his first payment at a Brazilian flea market when he was twelve. Two decades later, his Tallinn-based startup, Creem, is processing payments for AI builders in 190 countries [techfundingnews.com, September 2026]. The bet is straightforward: selling software globally is an operational nightmare for small teams. Creem offers to be the merchant of record, handling everything from checkout and tax compliance to fraud and affiliate payouts in one API [creem.io/about].

In September 2026, that bet attracted a €5 million seed round led by Inovo VC, bringing total disclosed funding to roughly €7 million [tech.eu, September 2026]. The round included follow-on from Practica Capital and Antler, plus angels like Bolt founder Markus Villig and Glia CEO Timmu Tõke. For a company that reported hitting €930,000 in annual revenue within ten months of founding with just two people, the capital is fuel for a specific mission: becoming the default money platform for the AI building era [estvca.ee, Unknown] [creem.io/blog/introducing-creem-2.0].

The Ex-Adyen Wedge

The founders, Gabriel Ferraz and Alec Erasmus, are the product's first credibility signal. Both are alumni of Google and, more critically, the payments giant Adyen [creem.io/about]. Erasmus led KYC-infrastructure development there, while Ferraz had built a payment gateway that processed over $200 million in volume prior to Creem [bebeez.eu, August 2025]. Their experience informs the platform's architecture, which is less about novel financial engineering and more about bundling and simplifying regulated complexity.

Creem's core offering is a merchant-of-record service. This means Creem legally sells the software to the end customer, assuming liability for sales tax, VAT, fraud, and chargebacks. The startup then handles multi-currency checkout, invoices, and payouts to the actual software creator. The pitch is a pricing model "closer to a processor" and a developer experience built for indie hackers and lean SaaS teams, a deliberate contrast to the enterprise-sales motion of some incumbents [creem.io/blog/paddle-vs-stripe].

Traction in a Crowded Field

Competing with Stripe and Paddle is not for the faint of heart. Creem's early traction suggests it has found a wedge. The company surpassed $1 million in annualized revenue with its two-founder team before its 2025 pre-seed round [bebeez.eu, August 2025]. By the 2026 seed, it reported doubling revenue to €2 million ARR [techfundingnews.com, September 2026]. This growth, while from a small base, indicates product-market fit with its target audience of founders selling SaaS, AI tools, and digital products.

The platform's features are a direct response to the headaches of global sales:

• Global tax handling. The system manages sales tax and VAT compliance across jurisdictions, a major pain point for solo founders [creem.io].
• Unified payout engine. It supports revenue splits, affiliate management, and payouts in both traditional currencies and stablecoins [bebeez.eu, August 2025].
• Usage-based billing. Beyond subscriptions, it offers custom meters and credit wallets for the variable consumption models common in AI APIs [creem.io/blog/7-best-subscription-billing-software-platforms].

Scaling the Team and the Product

The €5 million seed is earmarked for scaling. Creem is now hiring for roles like Founding Design Engineer and GTM Engineer, signaling a build-out beyond its core technical team [creem.io/careers]. Leadership has expanded to include a CFO, Pavel Ruban, and a CTO, Koliyanov Vyacheslav, bringing structured finance and backend engineering depth [LinkedIn, 2026].

The product roadmap, dubbed Creem 2.0, emphasizes being "the money platform for the AI building era" [creem.io/blog/introducing-creem-2.0]. This means deeper integrations for AI-native workflows and continued simplification of the financial stack. The goal is to let a developer focus entirely on building their model or application, while Creem becomes an invisible, reliable utility for monetization.

The Risk of Competing with Giants

The most credible counterfactual is scale. Stripe's ecosystem and Paddle's focus on software sellers create formidable moats. Creem's answer is not to out-feature them everywhere, but to be radically simpler and more affordable for the specific profile of a technically savvy, globally-minded indie builder or early-stage startup. Its success hinges on whether this segment is large and valuable enough to build a standalone business, and whether it can maintain its service quality and compliance rigor as transaction volume grows.

The €5 million seed from Inovo VC, with Practica Capital and Antler doubling down, is a vote of confidence in that thesis. For investors like Markus Villig, who built Bolt in the same region, the bet is on a team that understands global payments complexity from the inside and is stripping it down for a new generation of builders.

The question for the next twelve months is whether Creem can convert its early indie hacker traction into durable, mid-market contracts. If it can, the Tallinn fintech may prove that in the sprawling landscape of global payments, there is still room for a specialist built by operators who know exactly where the friction is.

Sources

1. [tech.eu, September 2026] Creem secures €5M to build financial infrastructure for AI-native startups | https://tech.eu/2026/09/17/creem-secures-eur5m-to-build-financial-infrastructure-for-ai-native-startups/
2. [bebeez.eu, August 2025] Creem raises €1.8 million pre-seed | https://bebeez.eu/2025/08/25/creem-raises-e1-8-million-pre-seed/
3. [creem.io, Unknown] About Creem | Where AI Builders Get Paid | https://www.creem.io/about
4. [techfundingnews.com, September 2026] Creem raises €5M seed | https://techfundingnews.com/2026/09/17/creem-raises-e5m-seed/
5. [estvca.ee, Unknown] Creem company profile | https://estvca.ee/company/creem
6. [creem.io, Unknown] Creem 2.0: The Money Platform for the AI Building Era | https://www.creem.io/blog/introducing-creem-2.0
7. [creem.io, Unknown] Creem blog on Paddle vs. Stripe | https://www.creem.io/blog/paddle-vs-stripe
8. [LinkedIn, 2026] Profile references for Creem leadership | https://www.linkedin.com/in/toms-bergans-bergis/
9. [creem.io, Unknown] Creem Careers Page | https://www.creem.io/careers