Senior Partnerships Executive

Round raises $6M to scale its AI-powered finance automation platform. Round raised seed funding to scale its AI-powered finance automation platform, alongside the launch of new tools designed to streamline financial operations and reduce manual workloads. London-based Round, an AI-powered finance automation platform, has raised $6 million in seed funding to accelerate the development of its financial infrastructure and expand its product offering. The round was led by Alstin Capital, with participation from Backed VC and Love Ventures. Around 10 per cent of Round's existing customers joined the round, alongside angel investors including Paul Forster, founder of Indeed. Existing investors, such as Passion Capital and early backers of Monzo, Tide, and GoCardless, also took part. Alongside the funding, Round announced the launch of two new products: Agentic Workflow Builder and Autonomous Payroll, both designed to streamline financial operations and reduce manual workload. Despite significant investment in finance software, many finance teams continue to operate across fragmented systems, manually managing tasks such as invoice approvals, payment execution, and payroll funding. Round addresses this challenge by combining intelligence with financial infrastructure to automate these workflows. Its platform integrates with existing banks and accounting systems, enabling finance teams to define rules for approvals, payment schedules, and cash management, while the system executes these processes automatically and synchronises data with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Pac O'Shea, co-founder of Round, said the company is not aiming to replace finance leaders with an AI-driven CFO but instead focuses on automating the repetitive operational tasks that finance teams typically handle manually. We are building for the finance team of the future, one that understands the importance of automation to keep up with the pace of modern companies. AI tools are rapidly being deployed across the industry, and finance teams do not need to be left behind, The newly launched Agentic Workflow Builder enables finance teams to describe workflows in natural language, which the platform converts into automated processes running continuously in the background. Meanwhile, Autonomous Payroll streamlines the entire payroll cycle, from importing payslips and routing approvals to funding and executing payments, eliminating the need to manage multiple systems manually. The new funding will be used to accelerate product development, expand the company's engineering and go-to-market teams, deepen integrations with banks and financial systems, and scale its infrastructure. Round also plans to support community-led growth initiatives, including finance-focused hackathons, workshops, and webinars aimed at helping organisations adopt automated financial workflows.

Tide appoints Bernie Miles as CDTO to help Tide accelerate at scale. Posted On 19 March 2026 Tide, the business management platform used by 1.8m members, has appointed Bernie Miles as Chief Data and Technology Officer (CDTO). Reporting to CEO Oliver Prill, Bernie's arrival provides a major boost to Tide's Executive Team. Bernie brings more than two decades of senior technology leadership experience from global fintech and ecommerce businesses. He joins from payments firm PPRO, where he served as Chief Technology Officer and Managing Director since 2021. Before that, Bernie held senior technology leadership roles at Wayfair and Klarna, where he led large international engineering teams supporting rapid product and platform growth. Tide's next stage of growth - elevating the business management platform proposition Bernie's arrival marks an inflection point for Tide as it moves from a fast-growing fintech into a globally leading, AI-first business management platform for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). His appointment follows last year's strategic investment from TPG, a leading global alternative asset manager, which valued Tide at $1.5 billion. Tide is evolving from a financial services pure-play firm into a platform that delivers key products and services for small businesses including credit, accounting, tax, payroll and subscriptions. Alongside, Chief Product Officer, Vinay Ramani, Bernie will help steer Tide's progression into a full service business management stack with highly connected services spanning finance, admin and adjacent products, such as insurance, cash savings, and transport payments, so crucial to keeping small businesses growing. Member-first AI Tide already benefits hugely from agentic tailwinds and under Bernie's leadership the company will responsibly apply advanced intelligence to unlock operational leverage. Tide is among the first companies to deploy AI to drive growth in regulated environments. Micro SMEs are time poor, busy, hardworking individuals and Tide will make AI work for their businesses. Intersection of finance and business admin Designed entirely with small businesses' finance and admin needs at its core, Tide is uniquely positioned to deliver laser-focussed products and services for its members. For example, its proprietary dataset - one of the largest globally focused on SMEs - provides a rich, real-time view of how small businesses operate, within a strong risk-management framework. This powerful and defensible data advantage means Tide can turn advanced AI into intuitive, practical tools that solve everyday business challenges, such as access to finance, at scale. To help spearhead this step change, Bernie will lead a global team of more than 700 engineers in the UK, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, Lithuania and India, united by a single goal: to give small business owners back their time. Tide's mission With SMEs forming the backbone of most economies, Tide's purpose across its four live markets (UK, India, Germany, and France) is to provide the right technology environment for the creation of new businesses, and the management and growth of existing ones. By focussing on their needs unlike other providers - Tide gives entrepreneurs the confidence, support and know-how to pursue their ambitions. The goal is simple: to let Tide's 1.8 million members focus on what they do best, while Tide handles the complexity, including the back office, of running a business. Oliver Prill, CEO of Tide, said: "Bernie is a proven technology leader with world-class experience in building and scaling complex platforms in high-growth, customer-centric environments. "With 1.8m members and an ambition to become the world's leading business management platform for SMEs, data and AI will be fundamental to how Fintechboostup differentiate and deliver value to its members. "His track record of delivering reliable, mission-critical platforms makes him an outstanding addition to our executive team, and I'm delighted to welcome him to Tide." Bernie Miles, Chief Data and Technology Officer at Tide, said: "I've always been inspired by the sheer grit of entrepreneurs, and I'm thrilled to join a team that truly puts the small business owner at the heart of everything they do. My mission as CDTO is to ensure its technology works tirelessly behind the scenes so its members don't have to. That means giving small businesses access to AI-powered tools and connectivity and making them simple, intuitive and embedded into everyday workflows. "By moving beyond the AI hype to deliver practical, intuitive tools, we can strip away the daily grind of administrative complexity. Whether it's automating painful manual processes or providing deeper financial insights, our goal is to make the 'boring stuff' invisible, giving our members back the most valuable resource of all: the time to focus on their passion."