Stripe alumni raise €30M Series A for Duna, backed by Stripe and Adyen executives

Anthropy and OpenAI might as well CompetitorsBut their presidents Daniela Amodei and Gregory Brockman have something in common: they are both Stripe alumni. With former employees who have created dozens of startups, the fintech company has become one of the most prolific companies.Founder factories“—and money follows. The latest example: business identity verification startup Duna, which just raised a €30 million Series A to become the best-funded European member of the so-called “stripe mafia.” Alphabet’s Growth Fund led the funding round capital gwhich has also supported Stripe ever since Co-lead Series D In 2016.

Donna is based in Germany and the Netherlands and was co-founded by Stripe alumni Doku van Lanschot and David Schreiber. With clients including Man’oushehthe startup helps fintech companies onboard business customers more efficiently, reducing the usual disruption associated with corporate identity checks and other fraud prevention measures.

Stripe is not a client of Duna, but its executives are well-positioned to understand the opportunity the startup is seizing, which is reflected in its cap table, Van Lanschoot said. Angel investors in the company include Stripe’s current COO Michael Cogan and former CEOs David Singleton (CTO) and Claire Hughes Johnson (COO). Even Stripe competitor Adyen got involved, with CRCO Mariëtte Swart and CFO Ethan Tandowsky joining as angels.

Their endorsements also validate Van Lanshut’s hunch that these companies would not compete with Donna, even though they could. “It requires such fine-grained controls that change on a company-by-company basis that Adyen or Stripe won’t be onboarding their business as a separate product where another enterprise customer can change all the configurations,” he told TechCrunch.

If it’s still worth the effort for Duna, it’s because the startup is going after a long line of enterprise clients who don’t have huge resources to devote to onboarding the business. But it’s also because her vision doesn’t stop there: Duna’s ambition is to build a network that allows businesses to reuse verified identity information across multiple platforms.

“What we want to build over time is a global trust infrastructure where we provide a digital passport to every company. So you can reuse your file from onboarding on (German spend management platform) Moss to joining Plaid, or you can reuse it to open a bank account,” Van Lanschoot said.

This goal resonated with Alex Nichols, the general partner who led CapitalG’s Series A investment. “I would say the common thing I look for in my investments is some kind of network effect, or more formal scale advantage,” he told TechCrunch. “I also love it when founders have an insight into a problem they may not know anything else about, and this is a very good example of that,” he added.

Duna has competitors in the category known as KYB, or “know your business.” This includes vendors like Jumio and Veriff. But for Nichols, what sets Donna apart is its decision to generate its own data, rather than trying to aggregate existing data sources that are often unavailable. “It’s a rare opportunity to rebuild something as essential as Visa and create an amazing business in the process.”

Donna says she has already found a strong business case in helping clients onboard business users faster and cheaper. This also explains why existing investors doubled down: Index Ventures, which led Donna’s €10.7 million seed round In May 2025, he participated in the Series A, as did Puzzle Ventures and Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman. But the startup’s greater ambition won’t come to fruition until Donna reaches scale. So the company is looking for shortcuts.

How is that? Van Lanschoot and Donna’s team identify small clusters of companies that already overlap with each other — what they call “network patches.” These companies include manufacturing companies with common clients, investment firms with overlapping limited partners, or companies in the same small country. In these cohesive groups, the ability to reuse verification becomes valuable immediately, even before Duna achieves full network effects.

Van Lanschot said that these countries may be small, but the opportunity is great. “In the Netherlands alone – which is a very small country – the four largest banks employ 14,000 people in compliance, half of whom work in companies.” Duna won’t completely replace these functions yet, but AI automation can save costs and generate revenue even before network effects become apparent.

If Duna eventually provides Rails to the Identity Network, there may be greater opportunity to leverage this position to enable one-click business onboarding. This would make it closer to Amazon’s one-click payment — or closer to B2B, to Stripe Link. Once again with Duna, Stripe connectivity is never far away.