Sam Ross, co-founder and CEO of Numeral, didn’t set out to build a tax startup. The idea came to him while he was traveling the world after leaving his job as a product manager at Airbnb in 2018.
To fund his trips, Ross ran a few small e-commerce stores, including an online jewelry shop and a vitamin brand. But one thing constantly annoyed him: the nightmare of handling sales tax.
That same year, a Supreme Court ruling changed everything, forcing online businesses to collect sales tax in nearly every U.S. state where they had customers, not just where they were based. Suddenly, Ross had to manage taxes across 40+ states.
“I went from collecting tax just in California to dealing with 40 states overnight. That was painful,” Ross told TechCrunch.
In 2023, he applied to Y Combinator, encouraged by his former Airbnb boss, Gustaf Alstromer. The idea? Automate sales tax management with AI.
Now, just two years later, Numeral has raised $35 million in Series B funding, valuing the startup at $350 million. The round was led by Mayfield with backing from Benchmark, Uncork Capital, YC, and even Mantis, the VC fund run by The Chainsmokers.
Numeral’s AI acts like a virtual tax accountant, tracking rules across 11,000+ jurisdictions, sorting through tax mail, and filing payments automatically. It even knows quirky laws, like in New York where a whole bagel is tax-free, but slicing it makes it taxable.
The company now serves over 2,000 e-commerce and SaaS clients, including EightSleep, Graza Olive Oil, and Manus, and has grown revenue 3.5x in the past year.
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While sales tax may sound niche, it’s a hot market. Numeral faces competition from startups like Anrok and Zamp, and even the 26-year-old incumbent Avalara, which may go public soon. But Ross believes Numeral stands out with its international tax filing support, already handling clients in places like Kenya and Tanzania.
