Celery, a financial operations platform that utilizes AI to automate internal controls, today announced that it has raised $6.25 million in seed funding. The funding round was led by Team8, with participation from Verissimo Ventures, Centre Street Partners, 97212 Ventures, and additional strategic angel investors. This brings the company’s total funding to $9 million.
What Celery does: Created for healthcare and other labor-intensive industries like construction, hospitality, and manufacturing, Celery replaces hours of manual reviews with intelligent audit agents that detect fraud, compliance risks, and financial inefficiencies in minutes, with no software setup or system integration required.
Celery has evolved from a payroll auditing tool identifying discrepancies, policy violations, and overtime inefficiencies to a comprehensive financial monitoring system for corporate revenue and expenses.
The company’s solutions could reduce manual oversight by up to 91%, cut payroll costs by 0.6% on average, and deliver 8 times ROI. And to date, Celery processed over 430,000 payslips, analyzed more than $550 million in payroll data, and prevented $2.3 million in losses for its customers.
Celery’s solutions are already utilized by dozens of U.S. healthcare organizations, including New York-based provider Ultimate Care, which reduced its annual overtime and billing discrepancies by more than $200,000 after adopting the platform. Within weeks, the company found hidden payroll issues, gained immediate ROI, and automated their auditing process.
Company founders: Celery was created by Yuval Brot (CEO), a serial entrepreneur; Noam Slomianko (CTO), a cyber expert and the first employee of Vulcan Cyber (acquired by Tenable); and Hillel Shalev (COO), a CPA and former biotech CFO who knows the challenges of managing complex, error-prone financial systems.
What the funding will be used for: The new funding round will be used to expand Celery’s go-to-market operations, accelerate product development, and launch new audit agents focused on expense review, fraud detection, and fixed asset controls. The company is also exploring channel partnerships with payroll providers and accounting platforms.
KEY QUOTES:
“Finance leaders today are being asked to do more with less. Yet, financial controls are still being done manually—often across massive spreadsheets and disconnected systems. We built Celery to replace this outdated workflow with real-time, automated oversight that’s accurate, fast, and cost-effective.”
Yuval Brot, CEO and co-founder of Celery
“I spent years chasing down revenue leakage errors and reconciling spreadsheets that should never have needed fixing. I knew there had to be a smarter way—one that could reduce risk, flag unprofitable clients, and detect potential revenue losses, all while giving finance leaders confidence that nothing is slipping through the cracks.”
Hillel Shalev, co-founder and COO of Celery
“Finance leaders are under pressure to cut costs and ensure compliance, yet many still rely on manual oversight. Celery gives CFOs precision and visibility into risks hidden in their data, enabling smarter, leaner operations. With 82% of CFOs increasing fintech spend in 2025, this is exactly the kind of high-ROI solution they’re prioritizing. Automation is solving what manual reviews can’t.”
Hadar Siterman-Norris, Partner at Team8
