This Austin startup wants artificial intelligence to help accountants with your taxes

Artificial intelligence has been increasingly making headlines as companies launch products from chat bots to image generators.

But would your accountant use it to help file your taxes?

That’s the aim behind Austin-based Black Ore, a startup that aims to use artificial intelligence technology to shake up the financial services sector, starting with an accounting focused product.

The company, which was founded by CEO Eyal Shinar and Chief Technology Officer Pavel Kapovski in 2022, was operating under stealth until it announced itself to the public this month, as it launches its first product.

The company also has raised $60 million in funding, which Black Ore said it will use to bring on new customers, grow its team and develop additional financial services products.

Shinar said the company gets its name from the black ore mineral, which he said is a crucial element used in industrial production.

“Without black ore you're going to have a hard time generating copper or magnetite, which is really necessary for electricity production,” Shinar. “We are planning to do the same for the digital world.”

Shinar, who previously founded San Francisco-based Fundbox, a financial technology company that makes payment and lending software for small and medium sized businesses, moved to Austin in 2021, before starting Black Ore in early 2022.

Black Ore is launching its first product Tax Autopilot, a tool that uses automation and artificial intelligence to help accountants by simplifying the tax preparation and review process.

The company said the product, which is designed to cut down certain accounting processes from days to seconds, is initially launching to a limited number of customers before offering widespread availability in early 2024.

Currently, Shinar said in order to do a tax return, certified public accountant firms spend lots of time chasing down clients to get needed information and tax documents, classifying and organizing those documents, extracting the needed information, and checking it all out for errors.

“That usually takes a lot of time, is highly manual, and prone to mistakes,” Shinar said.

With Black Ore, Shinar said accountants can instead let the company’s software integrate and pull the data from PDFs, pictures and even handwritten notes into one secure place. Black Ore then transforms the info into useable data and calculates the return. The company’s software also extracts that and puts it into tax software that firms are already using.

Following its first project, the company said it aims to expand to other areas such as wealth management, banking, financial advisory and planning, and insurance services.

Shinar said the company aims to grow the team as it builds out these other products. Currently, the company has about twenty people, primarily in Austin. Shinar said while Black Ore does not have any specific headcount goals, he wouldn’t be surprised if they double the team in the next year, noting a preference for hiring in Austin.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Austin startup Black Ore wants to use AI to help you file your taxes