A new wave of startups is being built by lean, globally distributed teams – and Tallinn-based Creem wants to be their financial backbone. The fintech startup has raised €1.8 million in a pre-seed round to expand its programmable finance platform, designed specifically for AI-first businesses.
The funding round was led by Practica Capital, with participation from Antler and angel investors including Johan Pietilä, Martin Olofsson, and advisors from Revolut and Crypto.com. The fresh capital will be channelled into growing Creem’s compliance and payments infrastructure while scaling its developer-first finance tools.
Creem was founded less than a year ago by ex-Google and Adyen engineers Gabriel Ferraz and Alec Erasmus. Despite operating without a sales team, the two-person company has already crossed €930,000 in annualised revenue. Its pitch: act as the “financial OS” for AI-native companies, giving startups access to global payments, tax handling, revenue automation and multi-party payouts – all embedded directly into their workflows.
“AI is blowing open the doors of entrepreneurship, but the infrastructure hasn’t caught up,” said Ferraz, Creem’s CEO. “These aren’t big corporations with finance departments. They’re lean teams of builders and contributors from all over the world. We’re building the rails they need to operate at speed, scale, and transparency.”
The platform has found early traction among startups in emerging markets. One standout feature, Revenue Splits, lets founders automate complex revenue sharing across contributors, products, or sales channels – a common friction point for distributed teams. According to early adopters, the tool not only simplifies reconciliation but also fosters smoother collaboration with contractors and technical partners.
For Creem’s backers, the startup is tapping into a fundamental shift in how companies are built. “Creem is building the orchestration layer for a new category of companies – lean teams running vast networks of contributors and systems,” said Arvydas Bložė, Partner at Practica Capital. “Their infrastructure is exactly what this new wave of programmable organisations needs to operate at scale.”
The founders bring strong fintech and crypto pedigrees. Ferraz previously launched Brazil’s first crypto software agency and scaled a payments platform to €180 million in GMV before relocating to the Baltics. Erasmus led KYC infrastructure at Adyen and built backend systems for crypto brokerages before teaming up with Ferraz at Change Invest.
With the new funding, Creem plans to expand into more markets, enhance its compliance stack, and roll out programmable APIs covering payments, KYC, tax handling, and embedded financial workflows. The goal: give AI-native startups the financial infrastructure to operate globally from day one.
