Warp has announced an $18 million Series A round led by Sound Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator, HOF Capital, SV Angel, Homebrew Capital, and Watershed Capital partners Imraan Ahmed and Zunaira Arshad. This latest round brings the company's total funding to $24 million.
A number of prominent founders and operators also joined the round, including Dropbox co-founders Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi, Cruise founder Kyle Vogt, and investors from OpenAI and Brex. The new capital will accelerate Warp’s vision to become the go-to back-office solution for early-stage startups.
Startups today face growing complexity in HR and payroll due to remote hiring and increasing regulatory demands. According to Warp, more than 50% of new startups now hire across multiple U.S. states from day one—a 3x jump since 2019. Legacy providers like ADP and Gusto often fall short when it comes to handling this multi-state compliance.
Warp’s AI-first approach tackles this problem head-on. “We're not selling another payroll platform. We're selling time back to founders,” the company explains. Instead of relying on manual workflows, Warp automates critical tax compliance tasks behind the scenes, allowing founders to onboard new hires in under a minute.
Warp plans to use the funds to expand its engineering team and accelerate product development. The platform already supports payroll in all 50 U.S. states and global contractor payments in over 150 countries. The team aims to ship key new features—including compensation benchmarking, Okta SSO, and app provisioning—within the next six months.
To support this growth, Warp is hiring across engineering and go-to-market roles, operating from its 8,000 sq ft office in New York’s Flatiron district. The company offers competitive compensation and equity packages, with ten open roles currently listed.
Founded by Ayush Sood, Warp was born from personal frustration with outdated payroll systems. After a payroll failure disrupted their team, the founders decided to reimagine back-office operations. Warp now automates everything from tax registrations and quarterly filings to issuing W-2s—tasks that previously required hours of manual work or entire ops teams.
What makes Warp stand out is its AI-powered automation. Unlike legacy systems, Warp uses large language models to interpret and process tax regulations with 99% accuracy, cutting error rates to under 2% and reducing filing costs to less than $10.
Warp already serves fast-growing companies like Bland AI, Reducto, Julius AI, Paraform, and Pirate Wires. Its investors include early believers such as Harj Taggar, Garry Tan, Balajis Srinivasan, Kevin Hartz, and Dan Romero.
With this latest round, the team is doubling down on its mission to help startups scale without the back-office headaches. As Ayush notes: “Payroll should empower businesses, not burden them.”
