Stripe alumni raise €30M Series A for Duna, backed by Stripe and Adyen execs

Stripe alumni raise €30M Series A for Duna, backed by Stripe and Adyen execs

Anthropic and OpenAI could also be rivals, however their presidents Daniela Amodei and Gregory Brockman have one factor in widespread: they’re each Stripe alumni. With former workers who went on to create dozens of startups, the fintech company has develop into one among the most prolific “founder factories” — and the cash is following. The latest instance: enterprise id verification startup Duna, which just raised a €30 million Series A to develop into the best-funded European member of the so-called “Stripe mafia.” The funding round was led by Alphabet’s development fund CapitalG, which has also backed Stripe since co-leading its Series D in 2016.

Based in Germany and the Netherlands, Duna was cofounded by Stripe alumni Duco Van Lanschot and David Schreiber. With prospects including Plaid, the startup helps fintech firms onboard enterprise prospects more effectively, lowering the typical churn related to company ID checks and other fraud prevention measures.

Stripe shouldn’t be a buyer of Duna, Van Lanschot said, however its executives have been nicely positioned to grasp the alternative that the startup is seizing, which is mirrored in its cap desk. The company’s angel traders embrace current Stripe COO Michael Coogan and former executives David Singleton (CTO) and Claire Hughes Johnson (COO). Even Stripe rival Adyen obtained concerned, with CRCO Mariëtte Swart and CFO Ethan Tandowsky becoming a member of as angels.

Their endorsements also validate Van Lanschot’s hunch that these firms received’t compete with Duna, even though they might. “It requires such fine-grained controls that change on a company-by-company basis, that an Adyen or a Stripe isn’t going to spin out their business onboarding as a separate product where another enterprise customer can change all of the configurations,” he told TechCrunch.

If it’s still price the effort for Duna, it’s because the startup goes after the lengthy tail of enterprise purchasers that don’t have enormous assets to dedicate to enterprise onboarding. But it’s also because its imaginative and prescient doesn’t cease there: Duna’s ambition is to build a network that permits firms to reuse their verified id data across a number of platforms.

“What we want to build over time is a global trust infrastructure where we provide a digital passport for every business. So you can reuse your file from onboarding on [German spend management platform] Moss to onboard with Plaid, or you can reuse it to open up a bank account,” Van Lanschot said. 

This aim resonated with Alex Nichols, the common companion who led CapitalG’s funding into the Series A. “I would say the common thing I look for in my investments are some sort of network effects, or more formal scale advantage,” he told TechCrunch. “I also love it when founders have an earned insight about a problem they may not known about otherwise, and this is a very good example of that,” he added.

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Duna has opponents in the class generally known as KYB, or Know Your Business. This contains distributors such as Jumio and Veriff. But for Nichols, what units Duna aside is its resolution to generate its personal data, somewhat than making an attempt to mixture present data sources that are often missing. “It’s the rare opportunity to rebuild something as foundational as a Visa and create an amazing business in the process.”

Duna says it has already discovered a strong enterprise case in serving to prospects onboard company customers quicker and cheaper. This also explains why present traders are doubling down: Index Ventures, which led Duna’s €10.7 million seed round in May 2025, participated in the Series A, as did Puzzle Ventures and Snowflake chairman Frank Slootman. But the startup’s larger ambition received’t repay until Duna reaches important scale. So the company is trying for shortcuts.

How so? Van Lanschot and the Duna team are figuring out small clusters of firms that already overlap with each other—what they name “patches of networks.” These embrace manufacturing firms with shared prospects, funding corporations with overlapping LPs, or firms in the same small nation. In these tight-knit teams, the ability to reuse verification turns into worthwhile instantly, even before Duna achieves full network effects.

The nations could also be small, however the alternative is big, Van Lanschot said. “In the Netherlands alone — a tiny, tiny country — the four biggest banks employ 14,000 people in compliance, and half of them are working on businesses.” Duna received’t absolutely substitute these jobs yet, however AI automation can save prices and generate income even before the network effects kick in.

If Duna finally supplies the rails for an id network, there could be an even larger alternative in profiting from this place to allow one-click enterprise onboarding. This would make it akin to Amazon’s one-click checkout — or nearer to B2B, to Stripe Link. Once again with Duna, the Stripe connection is never actually far.

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