Crunched

Cover Block

Attribute	Value
Name	Crunched
Tagline	An Excel-native AI analyst for ambitious advisors in consulting, investment banking, and private equity.
Headquarters	New York, NY
Founded	2025
Stage	Seed
Business Model	SaaS
Industry	Fintech
Technology	AI / Machine Learning
Geography	Global / Remote-First
Growth Profile	Venture Scale
Founding Team	Co-Founders (2)
Funding Label	Seed (total disclosed ~$6,000,000)

Links

• Website: https://www.usecrunched.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/usecrunched

The Short Version

Crunched is an Excel-native AI analyst that merits investor attention for its focused wedge into the high-value, high-friction workflows of elite financial advisors. The company, founded in 2025, builds a cloud-based tool that operates directly inside Microsoft Excel, aiming to compress tasks like financial modeling and data extraction from multi-hour efforts into automated workflows [Y Combinator, 2024]. Its differentiation rests on a deep integration with the incumbent tool of choice for its target users, consultants, investment bankers, and private equity analysts, avoiding the adoption hurdle of a standalone platform by fitting into existing Excel models [Crunched company blog, 2024].

The founding team is led by Philip Golub, who holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and was previously an Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company. Co-founder Matthew Reims contributes operational experience from a prior director role at Osprey Accounting [ZoomInfo, retrieved 2026]. The company has secured a $6 million seed round led by First Round Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, 20VC, and others [Nordic 9, 2026].

Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Core company facts, product claims, and funding details are confirmed by multiple independent public sources including the company blog, Y Combinator, and investor announcements.

Taxonomy Snapshot

Axis	Classification
Stage	Seed
Business Model	SaaS
Industry / Vertical	Fintech
Technology Type	AI / Machine Learning
Geography	Global / Remote-First
Founding Team	Co-Founders (2)
Funding	Seed (total disclosed ~$6,000,000)

The Company in Brief

Crunched was founded in 2025 as a venture to build an AI analyst that operates natively within Microsoft Excel [Y Combinator, 2024]. The company is headquartered in New York, NY, and positions itself as remote-first, targeting a global clientele of financial and consulting professionals [Crunched marketing site, 2024]. The founding narrative centers on addressing the time and error-proneness of manual financial modeling in Excel for elite advisors in consulting, investment banking, and private equity [Crunched company blog, 2024].

The company was accepted into the Y Combinator F25 batch [Y Combinator, 2024]. In 2024, the company announced it had raised $6 million [Crunched company blog, 2024]. By 2026, reporting indicated First Round Capital had led the round, with continued participation from Y Combinator and other firms like 20VC [Nordic 9, 2026]. The product is listed on the Microsoft Marketplace [Microsoft Marketplace, 2026].

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Founding year and location are from company sources; funding details are partially corroborated by secondary press.

What They Have Built

Crunched’s product strategy is defined by a single, clear wedge: it operates as a cloud-based tool that integrates directly into Microsoft Excel. The company describes it as “the first AI Excel agent built by and for Excel power users” [Y Combinator (LinkedIn post), Oct 2024]. This Excel-native approach is the foundation for its three core functional pillars: automated error-checking, external data gathering, and bespoke analysis generation.

Within the Excel environment, the tool performs several specific tasks. It error-checks workbooks for logical, formula, and conceptual mistakes [Y Combinator, 2024]. For data collection, it runs targeted web research and extracts figures from documents like annual reports into pre-built template models [Y Combinator, 2024] [Fondo, 2026]. Its most ambitious function is building new analyses from scratch, which the company states can compress one-hour modeling tasks into automated workflows taking five to ten minutes [Y Combinator, 2024]. Public user testimonials report significant efficiency gains, including being more than twice as fast on modeling tasks and achieving over 50% time savings [Reddit, 2026].

Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Product claims are consistently documented across the company's Y Combinator profile, blog, and marketplace listings.

Market Size and Demand

Metric	Value
Global BI & Analytics Software Market 2023	29 $B
Projected Market 2028	40 $B
Microsoft Office Users (2023)	1400 million

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Market sizing is based on analogous, broad industry reports, not a direct analysis of the product's target segment.

Who Else Is Fighting for This

Crunched enters a competitive arena defined by a fragmented set of alternatives that each address a different part of the financial analyst's workflow.

• Incumbent Workflow Tools. Analysts using Excel manually, augmented by a patchwork of data providers (Capital IQ, FactSet), web scraping tools (MonkeyLearn, ParseHub), and PDF data extractors (Adobe Acrobat, Tabula).
• AI-Powered Financial Analysis Platforms. Companies like AlphaSense and Sentieo offer AI for financial modeling as standalone web applications or plugins that require analysts to leave Excel.
• General-Purpose AI Coding & Analysis Assistants. Tools like GitHub Copilot and Cursor are used by some analysts to generate code for data processing.
• Spreadsheet Enhancement Plugins. A crowded category of Excel add-ins exists for specific tasks like formula auditing, data cleaning, or visualization.

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Competitive analysis is inferred from product positioning and market segments; no direct competitor names are confirmed in public sources.

Opportunity

The core bet is that Crunched can capture a material share of the productivity budget within high-value, Excel-dependent workflows. The headline opportunity is the creation of a category-defining, workflow-native AI platform for elite financial analysis. Rather than building a new standalone application, Crunched is attempting to become the default intelligence layer inside Microsoft Excel. The company's marketing emphasizes that it "works directly inside Excel" and "understands real-world financial models" [Crunched company blog, 2024].

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- The core opportunity thesis is built on well-cited product claims and target market definition.

Sources

1. [Y Combinator, 2024] Crunched: Excel AI analyst for Power Users | https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/crunched
2. [Y Combinator (LinkedIn post), Oct 2024] Crunched is the first AI Excel agent built by and for Excel power users | https://www.linkedin.com/posts/y-combinator_crunchedis-the-first-ai-excel-agent-built-activity-7386053314884534272-wOMh
3. [Crunched company blog, 2024] Crunched raises $6M to scale the AI analyst Excel power users deserve | https://www.usecrunched.com/blog/seed-round
4. [Crunched marketing site, 2024] Crunched - The AI analyst for ambitious advisors | https://www.usecrunched.com
5. [LinkedIn] Crunched - The AI analyst for elite advisors | https://www.linkedin.com/company/usecrunched
6. [Nordic 9, 2026] Crunched raised $6M seed led by First Round Capital, Y... | https://nordic9.com/news/crunched-raised-6m-seed-led-by-first-round-capital-y-combinator-20vc-and-angels-investors-including-yc-founder-paul-graham-and-mario-gotze/
7. [Fondo, 2026] Crunched Launches: The AI Excel Analyst ⚡ | https://fondo.com/blog/crunched-launches
8. [Microsoft Marketplace, 2026] Crunched | https://marketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/product/saas/wa200009174?tab=overview
9. [Reddit, 2026] r/accelerate on Reddit: Y Combinator on X: "Crunched (@usecrunched) is the first Excel AI built by and for Excel power users - tailored for consulting and finance workflows. The team has 10k+ hrs in Excel. Crunched is live with firms across Europe & US, with users report being >2x faster on modeling tasks. / X | https://www.reddit.com/r/accelerate/comments/1ocgyhd/y_combinator_on_x_crunched_usecrunched_is_the/
10. [review.usecrunched.com, 2024] Crunched - AI-powered presentation review | https://review.usecrunched.com
11. [ZoomInfo, retrieved 2026] Contact Matthew Reims, Email: m***@crunched.io & Phone Number | Co-founder & Chief Operating Officer at Crunched | https://www.zoominfo.com/p/Matthew-Reims/-1786731186
12. [Statista, 2024] Business Intelligence and Analytics Software Market Size Worldwide from 2021 to 2028 | https://www.statista.com/statistics/1367683/global-business-intelligence-analytics-software-market-size/
13. [Microsoft, 2023] Microsoft Annual Report 2023 | https://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar23/index.html
14. [TechCrunch, 2023] Mosaic raises $44M to automate financial planning | https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/12/mosaic-raises-44m-to-automate-financial-planning/