Khosla Ventures bets $10M on fully autonomous AI bookkeeper

synthetic, a new startup founded by former bench accounting ceo ian crosby, raised $10m in seed funding led by khosla ventures to develop a fully autonomous ai bookkeeper. unlike competitors like xero that rely on human accountants, synthetic intends to generate accrual-based financials entirely through ai, targeting ai and software startups. khosla partner jon chu justified the investment despite crosby's history with bench, arguing that controversy often obscures potential and noting crosby's successful subsequent tenure at shopify and mercury. the company admits the technology is not yet feasible for broad use, with crosby noting current ai makes significant calculation mistakes, but plans to use the cash runway to wait for foundation models to mature.