Swedish Startup Ankor Secures $1.3M to Eliminate Manual Financial Reconciliation

News World

Published by Stephen Oluwadara at June 25, 2025

Automating Core Financial Workflows

Launched in late 2023 by Kyle Rowley, a former pro athlete, Ankor is an actionable data platform for financial operations. The platform eliminates one of the most exhausting tasks in e-commerce: manual financial reconciliation. Its purpose-built accelerators automatically reconcile payments and streamline month-end closes for e-commerce finance teams.

Ankor’s accelerators are execution engines specifically designed for e-commerce operations. Unlike AI agents that try to be generalists, accelerators are purpose-built for specific operational challenges finance teams face daily. While AI agents need extensive training and often hallucinate or make mistakes in complex business contexts, Accelerators operate within defined parameters with built-in business logic.

They monitor business autonomously, identify specific opportunities, execute solutions with minimal human input, learn from outcomes, and continuously improve performance. They are like a business operations team, but they never sleep, never miss a detail, and get better every day.

“We’re not here to give you another dashboard,” Kyle says. “We’re here to give you your time and sanity back.” The AI platform’s early users report cutting 30+ hours monthly in reconciliation work. Ankor is a layer between financial systems – QuickBooks, Xero, Shopify, Centra – designed to sync disconnected data and automate core workflows.

What’s Next for Ankor

Ankor’s journey is the story of a startup launched from the founder’s lived experience. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, Kyle spent 15 years playing across the U.S. and Spain as a pro athlete. After retiring from basketball, he joined Contract Book (legal tech) as a sales professional.

He later worked at fast-growing fintech Juni, where he saw firsthand how painful financial data access could be, especially for e-commerce brands needing credit or clear cash flow. “I spoke with over 75 operators. They knew exactly what needed fixing, but they were buried in spreadsheets and siloed systems,” he told Techfundingnews.

He launched Ankor in late 2023 while living in Sweden with his Swedish partner and expecting his second daughter. The company now has a remote team of five people across borders, building AI systems designed not to replace people but to accelerate human potential.

Upfin, a Copenhagen-based fintech VC, led the round. It also attracted notable investors, including Jonathan Sanders, founder of Juni and Light, Bust Capital’s Oscar Hallen, former VP at Klarna, Layla Qassim, Chief of Staff at Moss, and seasoned business angels Neil Murray and Nicolai Hojer. Oliver from Upfin commented, “The best platforms solve real pain, not pitch grand visions. Kyle earned the trust of operators by being one of them.”

With its fresh funding secured, Ankor is gearing up for a major growth phase. The team is finalising its upcoming 3-Way Match product, designed to automate purchase order and invoice workflows, while preparing to expand into the UK market. As demand grows, Ankor would also scale its integrations across platforms like Shopify, Centra, and Stripe, anticipating a broader public launch in Q4 2025.

Main Image: Kyle Rowley. Image Credit: Uncredited