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Anthropic and OpenAI may be rivals<\/a>, but their presidents Daniela Amodei and Gregory Brockman have one thing in common: they are both Stripe alumni. With former employees who went on to create dozens of startups, the fintech company has become one of the most prolific \u201cfounder factories<\/a>\u201d \u2014 and the money is following. The latest example: business identity verification startup Duna, which just raised a \u20ac30 million Series A to become the best-funded European member of the so-called \u201cStripe mafia.\u201d The funding round was led by Alphabet\u2019s growth fund CapitalG<\/a>, which has also backed Stripe since co-leading its Series D<\/a> in 2016.<\/p>\n Based in Germany and the Netherlands, Duna was co-founded by Stripe alumni Duco van Lanschot and David Schreiber. With customers including Plaid<\/a>, the startup helps fintech companies onboard business customers more efficiently, reducing the typical churn associated with corporate ID checks and other fraud prevention measures.<\/p>\n Stripe is not a customer of Duna, van Lanschot said, but its executives were well placed to understand the opportunity that the startup is seizing, which is reflected in its cap table. The company\u2019s angel investors include current Stripe COO Michael Coogan and former executives David Singleton (CTO) and Claire Hughes Johnson (COO). Even Stripe rival Adyen got involved, with CRCO Mari\u00ebtte Swart and CFO Ethan Tandowsky joining as angels.<\/p>\n Their endorsements also validate van Lanschot\u2019s hunch that these companies won\u2019t compete with Duna, even though they could. \u201cIt requires such fine-grained controls that change on a company-by-company basis, that an Adyen or a Stripe isn\u2019t going to spin out their business onboarding as a separate product where another enterprise customer can change all of the configurations,\u201d he told TechCrunch.<\/p>\n If it\u2019s still worth the effort for Duna, it\u2019s because the startup is going after the long tail of enterprise clients that don\u2019t have huge resources to dedicate to business onboarding. But it\u2019s also because its vision doesn\u2019t stop there: Duna\u2019s ambition is to build a network that allows companies to reuse their verified identity information across multiple platforms.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we want to build over time is a global trust infrastructure where we provide a digital passport for every business. So you can reuse your file from onboarding on [German spend management platform] Moss to onboard with Plaid, or you can reuse it to open up a bank account,\u201d van Lanschot said.\u00a0<\/p>\n This goal resonated with Alex Nichols, the general partner who led CapitalG\u2019s investment into the Series A. \u201cI would say the common thing I look for in my investments are some sort of network effects, or more formal scale advantage,\u201d he told TechCrunch. \u201cI also love it when founders have an earned insight about a problem they may not know about otherwise, and this is a very good example of that,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBoston, MA<\/span> Duna has competitors in the category known as KYB, or Know Your Business. This includes vendors such as Jumio and Veriff. But for Nichols, what sets Duna apart is its decision to generate its own data, rather than trying to aggregate existing data sources that are often lacking. \u201cIt\u2019s the rare opportunity to rebuild something as foundational as a Visa and create an amazing business in the process.\u201d<\/p>\n Duna says it has already found a strong business case in helping customers onboard corporate users faster and cheaper. This also explains why existing investors are doubling down: Index Ventures, which led Duna\u2019s \u20ac10.7 million seed round<\/a> in May 2025, participated in the Series A, as did Puzzle Ventures and Snowflake chairman Frank Slootman. But the startup\u2019s bigger ambition won\u2019t pay off until Duna reaches significant scale. So the company is looking for shortcuts.<\/p>\n How so? Van Lanschot and the Duna team are identifying small clusters of companies that already overlap with each other \u2014 what they call \u201cpatches of networks.\u201d These include manufacturing companies with shared customers, investment firms with overlapping LPs, or companies in the same small country. In these tight-knit groups, the ability to reuse verification becomes valuable immediately, even before Duna achieves full network effects.<\/p>\n The countries may be small, but the opportunity is big, van Lanschot said. \u201cIn the Netherlands alone \u2014 a tiny, tiny country \u2014 the four biggest banks employ 14,000 people in compliance, and half of them are working on businesses.\u201d Duna won\u2019t fully replace these jobs yet, but AI automation can save costs and generate revenue even before the network effects kick in.<\/p>\n If Duna eventually provides the rails for an identity network, there might be an even bigger opportunity in taking advantage of this position to enable one-click business onboarding. This would make it akin to Amazon\u2019s one-click checkout \u2014 or closer to B2B, to Stripe Link. Once again with Duna, the Stripe connection is never really far.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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