Porters raises €2.7 million to build AI‐native banking operations

Founded in 2025, Porters is developing AI-native systems that replace legacy tools with autonomous, human‑in‑the‑loop workflows capable of safely handling regulated tasks such as account seizures, chargebacks, and insolvency coordination—areas often left untouched due to their compliance complexity.

The company was established by Porters’ three co-founders, who recognised a gap in the market after working in the fintech industry and witnessing first-hand how much manual, error-prone work still sits in the back office. Konstantin Kotulla and Christopher Barth both join with experience from Upvest, Europe’s leading investment infrastructure player, where Kotulla led commercial strategy, and Barth oversaw product development within regulated financial institutions. Michael John, an ETH outstanding thesis medal recipient, has experience building applied machine learning systems and leading large-scale technology projects.

“Banking operations have remained stubbornly manual despite decades of digitalization efforts,” said Kotulla, Co-Founder at Porters. “We’re solving this by building an AI-native service that doesn’t just automate tasks, but truly allows scaling without adding headcount. All while maintaining the resilience and compliance that financial institutions require.”

Porters has secured €2.7 million in pre-seed funding, in a round led by Earlybird and joined by Seedcamp, with notable participation from prominent fintech founders. Angel investors include Martin Kassing (Upvest), Alexandre Prot (Qonto), Lukas Zörner (Integral), and Adrien Treccani (Supervised). The round also includes participation from Casper Wahler from Hedosophia and Jonathan Brander (Upvest), bringing their expertise in scaling financial services operations. The funding will support the rapid development and scaling of additional backoffice services for its clients, and the expansion of the team from six people to at least 12. At launch, Porters will provide financial institutions with account seizure and insolvency management processes.

“Porters is tackling one of the most persistent pain points in financial services: operational complexity that scales exponentially with growth,” said Tim Rehder, General Partner at Earlybird. “Their approach of building an AI-first, compliance-ready Banking Ops platform  positions them uniquely to serve the most innovative financial institutions.”

(Press release/AJ)