Collective, a one-stop financial platform for the self-employed, announced today that it is acquiring Open Ledger, an embedded accounting platform, as it builds out its AI-powered operating system for solopreneurs. The terms of the deal were undisclosed.

Collective provides business formation, payroll and tax services through its AI-powered platform. The acquisition will help Collective accelerate the development, training, and deployment of AI agents by providing direct, real-time access to transaction data and the state of a company’s ledger and financial workflows. The AI can actively categorize expenses, calculate the eventual tax impacts instantly, and enable scenario modeling via a real-time AI CFO that Collective members can leverage in the Collective app.

“At Collective, our motto has always been that solo businesses should focus on what they care about,” said Hooman Radfar, founder and CEO of Collective, based in San Francisco. “Ultimately, what we want to do is build what we call a self-driving financial platform.”

The move comes at a time when the fintech world is paying increasing attention to the potential of small businesses to expand their reach, revenue and profits, thanks to AI agents and other tools—and solopreneurs race to incorporate the latest easy-to-use technologies in a push to create businesses that essentially drive themselves, under human oversight.

There are nearly 6.4 million small businesses with employees and 29.8 million “nonemployer” firms – those that don’t run payroll – in the U.S., according to the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy . Currently, large businesses are outpacing those with fewer than five employees in AI adoption, according to the office’s data, but the gap is narrowing.

Excitement about the potential for one-person businesses to achieve unprecedented revenue increased in April, when the New York Times published a story about Medvi, a telehealth startup providing GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, which is reportedly on track to reach $1.8 million in sales this year. The bootstrapped business is run by Matthew Gallagher, who previously ran a startup selling wristwatches, and one employee, his younger brother.

Open Ledger , an embedded accounting platform based in San Francisco, enables Saas companies and fintechs to integrate accounting natively into their products. Its API and LLM-powered infrastructure give platforms the tools to offer small business customers “done for you” bookkeeping, auto-categorization, reconciliation, and custom financial reporting, all embedded in its product. It connects with more than 12,000 banks and is integrated with Stripe, Plaid, QuickBooks and other financial platforms. It was funded by Kindred Ventures and blank_Ventures.

Owning Open Ledger will allow Collective to move more quickly, automate more, and build a platform that runs bookkeeping, tax, and the entire back office for its members, Radfar said. “We see a future where all 30 million solopreneurs in America have an AI-powered back office working for them 24/7 - proactively, automatically, and behind the scenes,” he said.

The transaction will help Open Ledger expand its reach, according to Pryce Yebesi, the company's co-founder and CEO.

“We built Open Ledger to make accounting infrastructure work for the next generation of financial products,” Yebesi said in a statement. “Joining Collective puts that at the heart of how millions of self-employed people manage their finances.”

Yebesi and his team will stay on after the acquisition, Radfar said. Yebesi sold his startup Utopia Labs to Coinbase for an undisclosed amount in 2025, according to a story published in TechCrunch.

Collective launched in 2020 and was fully operational by the spring of 2021, according to Radfar. It has served more than 13,000 businesses and manages more than $1.4 billion in finances.

It has raised approximately $90 million in venture capital from investors such as General Catalyst, QED Investors, Google’s Gradient Ventures, Expa and other backers. Its most recent round was in 2025.

The acquisition will also allow Collective to support self-employed people in taking a more strategic view of their businesses.

With the integration of Open Ledger, Collective will gain a “deeper, more precise view of every dollar flowing through a member’s business, enabling proactive guidance that anticipates needs before members have to ask,” Collective said in its statement. “This gives members time back and drives a truly agentic product.”

Prior to the acquisition, Collective has found that with the use of AI and other tools, many of its members are already seeing an uptick in revenue, according to Radfar.

“The trend of solopreneurs growing has been accelerating, not just in the number of solopreneurs but in the number of solopreneurs making a lot of money,” says Radfar. “People are using AI either to increase their margin and profitability, or they can handle more customers.”