Announcing our investment in Chicago-based Oath, an AI-native audit firm built to modernize financial assurance for the modern era.
The Big Four audit firms were all founded around 1850. The industrial revolution created the need: larger, more complex companies that were harder to verify. The model that emerged has survived ever since—send people, check the books, issue an opinion. For 150 years, this didn't need to change. Humans were modifying records and other humans could retrace their steps.
That era is over. Accounting and financial operations are being automated at an accelerating rate. What used to be a person modifying a ledger is now a complex system configured with rules, integrations, and AI producing results that no human touched. The financial system is no longer a ledger. It's a machine. And you need a machine to check the machine.
The $300B audit industry hasn't caught up. The workflow is manual, document-heavy, and slow. Auditors show up once a year, sample a subset of transactions and issue an opinion. A methodology that made sense in 1850 when checking everything was impossible, but is indefensible today when a machine can examine every record, every transaction, multiple times a year. Meanwhile, private markets have grown from under $1T in the 1990s to more than $13T today. The assurance layer hasn't evolved at the same pace.
What's been missing is an audit methodology built from the ground up around what technology can actually do.
Oath is an AI-native audit and advisory firm—a financial verification platform that delivers the full set of audit procedures as software. Not sampled, but comprehensive. Not annual, continuous. Oath connects directly to a client's data sources—accounting systems, document folders and fund administration platforms—to automatically extract, match and verify financial records on a monthly cadence that aligns with a company's financial close. A fund can verify K1 accuracy before sending them to LPs. An investor can validate a cap table against source documents. A CFO can confirm fee calculations independently of their fund admin. The firm aims to automate 80% of its work by 2030, freeing its team of "accounting engineers" to focus on judgment rather than paperwork.
"We knew Lucas could use technology to revamp complex financial institutions ever since we backed the seed round of Kin," said Victor Gutwein, Managing Partner. "In an age of increasingly audit cost and complexity, it only makes sense to use AI for tedious workflows, allowing talented human auditors to focus on more strategic tasks."
The economics are also fundamentally better. Traditional audit firms blend their billing rates so junior staff doing mechanical verification work bill at $300–400 an hour, work that machines can do for a fraction of the cost. Oath's model flips this: verification handles the mechanical layer, and the senior accountant applies judgment to a comprehensive, already-verified dataset. The result is an audit that costs the client less, pays the experienced professional more per hour and provides better assurance because the underlying work is more thorough.
The company was co-founded by Lucas Ward, CEO and fintech veteran who co-founded Kin Insurance, Chris Pesigan, CRO and CPA EY alum, and Christophe Frerebeau as CPO. They're joined by Christina Ho, who serves as Chief Assurance Officer, bringing deep regulatory credibility from her tenure as a PCAOB board member and prior experience at Deloitte.
"Independent verification is, by definition, a human institution. Someone has to stand behind the work. What changes is not whether humans are involved, but what they spend their time on," said Lucas Ward, Co-Founder and CEO.
Oath received its CPA license this week and is now accepting audit clients, starting with private companies and funds—the segment where traditional audit is most dislocated—with a path toward public markets over time. The incumbents sell a name. Oath sells proof.
We're excited to back Lucas for the second time and partner with the Oath team as they build the trust and verification platform for the speed and scope of modern finance.
About Oath: Oath is an independent verification, built for the AI-native financial system. From every record to a full audit opinion. The firm connects directly to clients' financial systems to automatically extract and verify records on a continuous basis, replacing slow, manual audit workflows with a machine-first methodology. Oath holds a CPA license and serves private company audit clients, with plans to expand to public markets. For more information, please visit www.oathverified.com.
Learn more: Former Audit Regulator Helps Set Up Accounting Firm Targeting 80% Automation
About M25: M25 is an early-stage software-focused venture firm based in Chicago, investing solely in tech startups headquartered in the Midwest. Since launching in 2015, M25 has become the most active investor in the region, quickly becoming the preferred seed investor for the next generation of Midwest unicorns. Portfolio companies include Kin Insurance, Loop Returns, Astronomer, Branch Pay, Authenticx and more. For more information, please visit www.m25vc.com.
