Taxnova joins a16z Speedrun after $1m pre-seed raise

February 4, 2026

Taxnova, a FinTech startup using AI to streamline R&D tax relief claims, has launched publicly after entering the a16z Speedrun accelerator and raising $1m in pre-seed funding.

The funding round was backed by a16z Speedrun, s16vc, Karaoke Club and 20 operators from technology companies.

Alongside the investment, Taxnova has entered the a16z Speedrun accelerator, completed a partnership pilot with a Top5 R&D tax advisory firm and supported dozens of early customers.

R&D tax relief is a government incentive designed to encourage innovation by reducing tax liabilities or providing cash reimbursements for qualifying work. Despite the scale of these schemes, adoption remains inefficient. In the UK, companies claimed £7.6bn in R&D tax relief in 2023–24, while in the US more than $32bn of federal R&D tax credits are issued annually, with more than 30 states offering additional schemes, Taxnova said.

At the same time, scrutiny has increased sharply, with UK enquiry rates rising from 0.5% to 20% in three years from 2022.

According to Taxnova, most of the inefficiency sits in data collection, which accounts for around 75% of the time spent on claims.

Taxnova addresses this by connecting directly to tools engineers already use, including GitHub, Jira, Linear, Slack and Notion. The platform identifies qualifying R&D projects, generates technical narratives explaining innovation, calculates eligible R&D percentages for direct costs and produces audit-ready documentation with full evidence trails, without diverting engineers from product delivery.

The company positions its platform as complementary to existing tax advisers rather than a replacement. For businesses operating across multiple regions, Taxnova also splits data by geography and maintains consistency across claims in the UK, US and other jurisdictions.