Stripe Alumni Raise €30m Series A For Duna, Backed By Stripe And Adyen Execs

Anthropic and OpenAI whitethorn beryllium rivals, but their presidents Daniela Amodei and Gregory Brockman person 1 point successful common: they are some Stripe alumni. With erstwhile labor who went connected to create dozens of startups, nan fintech institution has go 1 of nan astir prolific “founder factories” — and nan money is following. The latest example: business personality verification startup Duna, which conscionable raised a €30 cardinal Series A to go nan best-funded European personnel of nan alleged “Stripe mafia.” The backing information was led by Alphabet’s maturation money CapitalG, which has besides backed Stripe since co-leading its Series D successful 2016.

Based successful Germany and nan Netherlands, Duna was cofounded by Stripe alumni Duco Van Lanschot and David Schreiber. With customers including Plaid, nan startup helps fintech companies onboard business customers much efficiently, reducing nan emblematic churn associated pinch firm ID checks and different fraud prevention measures.

Stripe is not a customer of Duna, Van Lanschot said, but its executives were good placed to understand nan opportunity that nan startup is seizing, which is reflected successful its headdress table. The company’s angel investors see existent Stripe COO Michael Coogan and erstwhile executives David Singleton (CTO) and Claire Hughes Johnson (COO). Even Stripe rival Adyen sewage involved, pinch CRCO Mariëtte Swart and CFO Ethan Tandowsky joining arsenic angels.

Their endorsements besides validate Van Lanschot’s hunch that these companies won’t compete pinch Duna, moreover though they could. “It requires specified fine-grained controls that alteration connected a company-by-company basis, that an Adyen aliases a Stripe isn’t going to rotation retired their business onboarding arsenic a abstracted merchandise wherever different endeavor customer tin alteration each of nan configurations,” he told TechCrunch.

If it’s still worthy nan effort for Duna, it’s because nan startup is going aft nan agelong tail of endeavor clients that don’t person immense resources to dedicate to business onboarding. But it’s besides because its imagination doesn’t extremity there: Duna’s ambition is to build a web that allows companies to reuse their verified personality accusation crossed aggregate platforms.

“What we want to build complete clip is simply a world spot infrastructure wherever we supply a integer passport for each business. So you tin reuse your record from onboarding connected [German walk guidance platform] Moss to onboard pinch Plaid, aliases you tin reuse it to unfastened up a slope account,” Van Lanschot said. 

This extremity resonated pinch Alex Nichols, nan wide partner who led CapitalG’s finance into nan Series A. “I would opportunity nan communal point I look for successful my investments are immoderate benignant of web effects, aliases much general standard advantage,” he told TechCrunch. “I besides emotion it erstwhile founders person an earned penetration astir a problem they whitethorn not known astir otherwise, and this is simply a very bully illustration of that,” he added.

Duna has competitors successful nan class known arsenic KYB, aliases Know Your Business. This includes vendors specified arsenic Jumio and Veriff. But for Nichols, what sets Duna isolated is its determination to make its ain data, alternatively than trying to aggregate existing information sources that are often lacking. “It’s nan uncommon opportunity to rebuild thing arsenic foundational arsenic a Visa and create an astonishing business successful nan process.”

Duna says it has already recovered a beardown business lawsuit successful helping customers onboard firm users faster and cheaper. This besides explains why existing investors are doubling down: Index Ventures, which led Duna’s €10.7 cardinal seed round successful May 2025, participated successful nan Series A, arsenic did Puzzle Ventures and Snowflake president Frank Slootman. But nan startup’s bigger ambition won’t salary disconnected until Duna reaches important scale. So nan institution is looking for shortcuts.

How so? Van Lanschot and nan Duna squad are identifying mini clusters of companies that already overlap pinch each other—what they telephone “patches of networks.” These see manufacturing companies pinch shared customers, finance firms pinch overlapping LPs, aliases companies successful nan aforesaid mini country. In these tight-knit groups, nan expertise to reuse verification becomes valuable immediately, moreover earlier Duna achieves afloat web effects.

The countries whitethorn beryllium small, but nan opportunity is big, Van Lanschot said. “In nan Netherlands unsocial — a tiny, mini state — nan 4 biggest banks employment 14,000 group successful compliance, and half of them are moving connected businesses.” Duna won’t afloat switch these jobs yet, but AI automation tin prevention costs and make gross moreover earlier nan web effects footwear in.

If Duna yet provides nan rails for an personality network, location mightiness beryllium an moreover bigger opportunity successful taking advantage of this position to alteration one-click business onboarding. This would make it akin to Amazon’s one-click checkout — aliases person to B2B, to Stripe Link. Once again pinch Duna, nan Stripe relationship is ne'er really far.