Join the Opportunity: Duna, Backed by Stripe and Adyen Executives, Secures €30M Series A Funding!

Although Anthropic and OpenAI are competing entities, their leaders, Daniela Amodei and Gregory Brockman, share a noteworthy commonality: both have backgrounds at Stripe. The fintech firm has established itself as a prolific “founder factory,” producing numerous successful startups, and investment trends are now aligning accordingly. A prime example is Duna, a business identity verification startup that recently secured €30 million in Series A funding, positioning it as the best-financed European entity in the so-called “Stripe mafia.” This funding round was spearheaded by CapitalG, Alphabet’s growth fund, which has also been an investor in Stripe since co-leading its Series D round in 2016.

Headquartered in Germany and the Netherlands, Duna was co-founded by former Stripe employees Duco van Lanschot and David Schreiber. Catering to clients like Plaid, the company aims to enhance the onboarding process for fintech firms, significantly decreasing the usual customer churn associated with corporate identity verification and fraud prevention measures.

Though Duna does not count Stripe as a client, van Lanschot notes that the fintech giant’s leaders are in an advantageous position to grasp the potential Duna is tapping into, which is evident in its investor composition. The company’s angel investors include notable former Stripe executives such as David Singleton (CTO), Claire Hughes Johnson (COO), and Michael Cocoman (Global Chief Compliance Officer). Even Stripe’s competitor, Adyen, has shown interest, with CRCO Mariëtte Swart and CFO Ethan Tandowsky participating as angel investors.

These endorsements reinforce van Lanschot’s belief that these companies are unlikely to view Duna as competition, despite their capability to do so. “The level of fine-grained controls required varies significantly from company to company, which is why a firm like Adyen or Stripe wouldn’t spin off their business onboarding as a separate product where another enterprise could modify all configurations,” he explained to TechCrunch.

Duna’s pursuit is not only justified due to the demand for streamlined onboarding solutions among enterprise clients with limited resources, but also reflects its broader vision: to create a network that enables companies to leverage their verified identity information across various platforms.

“Our long-term goal is to establish a global trust infrastructure that provides a digital passport for every business. This would allow for seamless reuse of onboarding documents across platforms, from a German spend management system like Moss to corporate accounts with Plaid,” van Lanschot elaborated.

This ambitious vision resonated with Alex Nichols, the general partner overseeing CapitalG’s investment in the Series A. “In my investment considerations, I look for network effects or scaled advantages. It’s especially appealing when founders possess unique insights into problems that might otherwise go unnoticed, which is a strong aspect of Duna,” he shared with TechCrunch.

Duna competes within the KYB (Know Your Business) sector, facing rivals such as Jumio and Veriff. However, Nichols emphasizes that Duna’s distinction lies in its commitment to generating its own data rather than merely aggregating existing, often insufficient, data sources. “It’s a rare chance to reconstruct something as essential as Visa while simultaneously building a successful enterprise,” he remarked.

Duna reports a compelling business case in its ability to expedite the onboarding process for corporate users, leading existing investors to reinforce their support. Index Ventures, which guided Duna’s €10.7 million seed round in May 2025, participated in the Series A, alongside Puzzle Ventures and Snowflake chairman Frank Slootman. However, Duna’s grander ambitions will require significant scale to materialize. Thus, the company is actively seeking accelerated pathways.

How is Duna approaching this? Van Lanschot and his team are pinpointing small networks of companies that already exhibit overlap—termed as “patches of networks.” These include manufacturing firms with common customers, investment firms with shared LPs, or businesses operating within the same small geographical area. Within these closely-knit networks, the immediate benefits of reusable verification are tangible, even before Duna achieves full-scale network effects.

While the countries may be small, van Lanschot assures that the opportunities are significant. “For instance, in the Netherlands—a relatively small nation—the four major banks employ 14,000 individuals in compliance, with half dedicated to business operations,” he stated. CapitalG later clarified that the actual number is 13,000 compliance professionals across all Dutch banks. Regardless, while Duna may not entirely replace these positions instantly, AI-driven automation can yield cost savings and generate revenue even prior to achieving comprehensive network effects.

If Duna successfully establishes the framework for an identity network, there exists a substantial opportunity to facilitate one-click business onboarding. This would parallel Amazon’s one-click checkout but would be more akin to a B2B version, similar to Stripe Link. Once again, the connection to Stripe is ever-present in Duna’s narrative.

This article has been updated to correct the name and title of one of Duna’s angel investors and to clarify the number of individuals employed in compliance in the Netherlands.