Excel AI analyst for power users in consulting, IB, and PE
HQ: Oslo, Norway | Founded: 2025 | Employees: 10 | Stage: Seed | Website: https://usecrunched.com
Crunched is an Excel-native AI analyst built for power users in management consulting, investment banking, and private equity. The platform operates entirely within Excel and provides three core capabilities: end-to-end workbook error-checking (finding and fixing formula errors across thousands of interlinked cells), building financial models from scratch based on natural language descriptions, and handling grunt work like extracting and linking data from IM documents to template models. Crunched targets the top 2% of the 1B+ Excel users globally — the highest-value, most sophisticated users. Founded in 2025 by Philip Borge (CEO), Michael Sakowski (COO), Lars Gjardar Musæus (CTO), and Markus Skagemo (Head of AI). Borge and Sakowski accumulated 10,000+ hours of Excel experience at McKinsey, working on deals in PE, consulting, and investment banking. Borge holds an MSc in Finance & PE from LSE. Sakowski holds a Masters in Banking & Finance from University of St. Gallen. Musæus has deep experience building production systems at Bekk, Schibsted, and Kongsberg Defence, with an MSc in Cybernetics & Robotics from NTNU. Skagemo was a data scientist at Oda (Norway's first unicorn) and BearingPoint (Global Innovation Award winner). YC Fall 2025 batch. Raised $6M seed led by First Round Capital with Y Combinator, 20VC, Paul Graham, Mario Götze, SV Angel, and others. Live with firms across 6 European countries, planning US expansion. HQ in Oslo, Norway.
Crunched has an exceptionally strong founding team: two ex-McKinsey consultants with 10,000+ hours of Excel experience in consulting/PE, plus two AI/engineering experts from NTNU with deep enterprise AI experience. The $6M seed round from First Round Capital, YC, Paul Graham, and Mario Götze is a strong signal. The focus on the top 2% of Excel users (consulting, IB, PE) is smart — these users have the highest willingness to pay and the most pain. Key risk: competing against Microsoft's own Copilot for Excel and other AI Excel tools (Carousel, Numerous, etc.), but the power-user focus is a defensible niche.
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