Zalos raised $3.6M for AI platform that converts screen recordings into financial agents

Zalos raised $3.6M to develop a platform that converts screen recordings of financial processes into autonomous agents. The startup from Y Combinator Fall 2025 is betting on a pain point for finance teams: too much manual work in fragmented corporate software.

How the product works

The idea behind Zalos is simple: an employee shows a process on screen, and the system converts this sequence of actions into a software agent. Instead of classical automation through APIs or lengthy integration with internal systems, the company proposes teaching software based on real user scenarios. For finance teams this is particularly important because many operations still depend on interfaces, manual checks, and switching between multiple windows.

This removes the barrier to entry for the team. Such an approach can shorten the path from observation to automation. If the product truly consistently understands screen recordings, businesses don't need to wait for all software vendors to open necessary APIs or for IT teams to assemble another custom connector.

This is a strong thesis for a market where processes often live simultaneously in ERPs, banking cabinets, spreadsheets, payment services, and internal tools. Especially where legacy systems don't work well together.

Why this resonates

The key idea here is formulated bluntly: the CFO stack is simultaneously a problem and a limitation. Finance departments rarely work in a single unified system. In practice, they have a set of specialized services that are poorly coordinated with each other, and any automation runs into access issues, integrations, and control risks. Often it's not one product but a dozen separate interfaces. Any process change requires coordination between finance, IT, and security.

• Data is scattered across different systems and formats
• The same process has to be repeated manually
• API integrations are implemented slowly and cost a lot
• New tools often add another layer of complexity rather than reduce the workload

Against this backdrop, the "record a process, get an agent" model sounds like a clear promise of efficiency. Especially for tasks where unique business logic isn't important, but careful repetition of routine steps: reconciliation, data transfer, status checks, file preparation, updating records across multiple systems. At the same time, finance is one of the most sensitive areas for automation, so the real value of Zalos will depend not only on convenience but also on accuracy, auditability, and manageability of such agents.

Who's behind the startup

The startup was founded by a former general manager of Agicap and a former Apple Pay engineer. This is a strong combination for this segment: on one hand, understanding of how cash flows, treasury processes, and the daily work of finance teams are structured, on the other, experience in payment engineering and building reliable user-facing systems. For an early-stage B2B company, such a set of backgrounds is often more important than loud promises in a pitch deck.

For corporate sales this is a serious plus. Zalos is part of the Y Combinator Fall 2025 batch, and this already adds visibility to the project in the infrastructure AI market. The $3.

6M round was led by 14 Peaks fund, and was also joined by Cohen Circle and 20VC. For such an early stage, this is a signal that investors see not just another AI assistant for the office, but an attempt to occupy a specific niche at the intersection of automation, corporate software, and financial operations. Public details about business scale are still limited, but the problem statement itself looks very practical.

And it's precisely this that makes the project noteworthy right now.

What this means

Zalos is entering a segment where AI can deliver quick and measurable impact: fewer manual actions, less dependence on integrations, and faster launch of automation in finance. If the approach based on screen recordings proves reliable in real corporate scenarios, CFOs will gain a new way to automate work without major restructuring of their entire stack. For the financial software market, this is potentially an important shift. It moves the emphasis from integrations to observing how users work.