Numica raised $21 million to buy retiring CPAs' firms and run them on AI

Numica, a New York startup that buys small accounting firms from retiring owners and moves their work onto AI software, has raised $21 million in combined equity and debt. The round, announced Thursday, came from Roosh X, the investment arm of Ukrainian tech group Roosh, and London-based Flashpoint. CEO Slava Orekoff said most of the money will fund more acquisitions.

Orekoff spends much of his time in West Caldwell, Verona, and Montclair, N.J., talking to accountants who are ready to quit. Most of them don't want to stop seeing clients, he says. They want to stop running a business.

"You have your server down, you have an escalation coming in, your bill didn't go through with the vendor, you have all these problems with hiring," Orekoff told Fortune. "Maybe they were excited when they started building their business 25 years ago or 35 years ago. After a while, the things did not excite you anymore."

Orekoff cofounded Numica with Victor Lysenko. Before that, he wrote accounting software from age 17 for about seven years, then joined SAP, whose systems he calls "glorified accounting" for large companies.

How big is the retirement wave?

The math behind the business is stark. Roughly half of the country's 87,000 small accounting firms are owned by baby boomer CPAs or enrolled agents who will retire within five to seven years, Orekoff said. Fewer people are coming up behind them.

U.S. schools awarded 55,152 bachelor's and master's degrees in accounting in the 2023–24 school year, down 6.6% from the prior year, according to the American Institute of CPAs. Numica's new head of operations told Orekoff that a regional firm she worked for used to draw about 150 accounting students a year from a partner state university into its internship program. Now it gets fewer than 60.

That leaves clients stranded. "If your CPA is retiring, you are left," Orekoff said. "What they are buying most of the time is peace of mind."

What happens after Numica buys a firm?

From day one, Numica takes over billing, hiring, and technical systems. The staff accountants clients already know stay in place. Owners can work part-time on their longest-standing clients under transition plans that run up to four years, and Orekoff said most do exactly that.

"We were thinking that there will be more stress when it comes to transition," Orekoff said. "In fact, clients are more appreciative than anything else." Some clients sent congratulations to the owners who sold.

Numica launched in June 2025. As of Thursday it had bought seven practices and served about 6,000 clients across New York, New Jersey, Florida, Texas, and California, including restaurants, trucking companies, real estate firms, and health care practices. It closed its latest deal Monday and expects another next week.

Numica finds targets partly through its own AI tools, which watch broker listings and online marketplaces and flag a new listing within five minutes. Referrals from accountants who already sold are now its biggest deal source.

How much of the work does the AI do?

Accounting, Orekoff says, is "about thousands of small things that need to be done," and those tasks are well documented, which makes them a good fit for AI. The software codes each transaction, builds the profit-and-loss statement and balance sheet, and prepares state, federal, sales, and payroll tax filings. Accountants check the output, handle unusual cases, and work with clients. A CPA still reviews and signs the final work.

Orekoff says the software covered about 75% of the firms' workflows in its first year. The economics show it. Margins at Numica's first practice, in New York, rose from 37% to 52% within two months, and the company projects 70%.

Do clients know AI is doing the work?

Clients are told when their firm is sold. Many states require client consent, and consent letters went out two hours after the most recent deal closed. But clients are generally not told AI does much of the work.

"Do you care if a calculator or Excel was used to make calculations?" Orekoff said. He conceded some clients might leave over it: "People are always scared by some kind of new stuff which is unknown."

Clients are already using AI themselves. Orekoff says customers arrive after asking ChatGPT how to structure their taxes, and accountants must explain why the advice doesn't apply. "A lot of AIs are now programmed in a way that they want to please you," he said. "Because of that, it will not disagree with you."

His bet is that the software absorbs the drudgery and frees accountants for the work that matters. "I've never heard of someone dreaming to become a person moving numbers from one spreadsheet to another," Orekoff said. "The future of the industry is to be more client facing, spend more time with the client."