Duna Raises €30M to Build Business Identity Network
Duna, a European startup founded by former Stripe executives, has secured €30 million in Series A funding to revolutionize how businesses verify corporate identities. Led by Alphabet's growth fund CapitalG, the round positions Duna as the best-funded European member of the influential "Stripe mafia"—a network of successful founders who cut their teeth at the payments giant. The Berlin and Amsterdam-based company tackles a critical pain point for fintechs: streamlining business onboarding while slashing fraud-related churn.
Credit: Duna
Business identity verification remains one of the most friction-filled processes in enterprise software. Companies routinely lose potential customers during lengthy corporate ID checks, compliance screenings, and document validations. Duna co-founders Duco van Lanschot and David Schreiber experienced this firsthand while building infrastructure at Stripe. Their solution? A configurable platform that lets fintechs customize verification workflows without engineering heavy lifting—cutting onboarding time from days to minutes.
Why Stripe Alumni Keep Building Breakthrough Startups
The so-called "Stripe mafia" has quietly become Europe's most formidable founder pipeline. Beyond Duna, Stripe veterans have launched category-defining companies across AI, infrastructure, and financial services. What makes this alumni network uniquely potent? Deep operational experience scaling complex global systems combined with intimate knowledge of enterprise pain points.
Van Lanschot and Schreiber spent years optimizing Stripe's business verification flows across dozens of markets. They witnessed how rigid, one-size-fits-all approaches failed companies with nuanced compliance needs—especially in regulated industries like banking and crypto. "You'd see promising startups abandon sign-ups after hitting a third document request," van Lanschot recalls. "The economics didn't justify manual review teams for early-stage companies."
This earned insight became Duna's founding thesis: verification shouldn't be a barrier but a seamless gateway. Unlike legacy providers offering inflexible checklists, Duna's API allows clients to adjust risk thresholds, document requirements, and approval workflows per customer segment. A neobank onboarding freelancers might skip certain checks required for corporate treasury clients—all within the same integration.
CapitalG Bets Big on Trust Infrastructure
CapitalG's leadership of this round signals growing institutional confidence in identity as foundational internet infrastructure. The Alphabet-affiliated fund has backed Stripe since 2016 and recognizes parallels between consumer identity solutions and the emerging business verification layer. General Partner Alex Nichols emphasized Duna's network effects potential—a rarity in compliance-heavy sectors.
"What excites us is how verification data compounds in value," Nichols explained. "Each successful onboarding enriches Duna's risk intelligence, making subsequent verifications faster and more accurate. That creates a defensible moat no point solution can replicate."
The cap table reveals deeper validation: angels include Stripe's former CTO David Singleton, ex-COO Claire Hughes Johnson, and Global Chief Compliance Officer Michael Cocoman. Even Adyen executives Mariëtte Swart and Ethan Tandowsky invested personally—despite operating in adjacent spaces. This cross-competitive endorsement underscores a shared belief: specialized identity networks will outperform monolithic platforms.
Why Payment Giants Won't Compete With Duna
A natural question arises: why wouldn't Stripe or Adyen simply build this capability internally? Van Lanschot offers a compelling answer rooted in product architecture realities. Business verification demands hyper-granular configuration—different industries, jurisdictions, and risk appetites require bespoke rule sets that change monthly as regulations evolve.
"Payment platforms optimize for transaction velocity," he notes. "Business onboarding requires deep, slow configuration work most enterprises can't justify maintaining internally. It's not about technical capability—it's about focus. No payment processor will spin out a standalone verification product requiring constant customization per client."
This creates whitespace for specialists like Duna. Their platform serves the long tail of fintechs lacking resources for in-house compliance teams—companies processing under $100 million annually who still face enterprise-grade regulatory demands. For these clients, Duna delivers Fortune 500-grade verification infrastructure at startup-friendly pricing.
The Digital Passport Vision Takes Shape
Duna's ambition extends far beyond streamlining single-platform onboarding. The founders envision a global trust layer where businesses carry verified identity credentials across services—like a digital passport for corporations. Imagine completing KYB (Know Your Business) checks once with a spend management platform, then instantly reusing that verified profile to open banking relationships, access lending products, or integrate payment services.
"We're building infrastructure where trust becomes portable," van Lanschot says. Early traction supports this vision: clients like Plaid already leverage Duna to accelerate partner integrations. When a new fintech joins Plaid's network, pre-verified business data slashes integration timelines from weeks to hours.
This network effect creates powerful retention mechanics. Each additional platform adopting Duna's verification standard increases the utility of every business profile in its system. Companies gain incentive to maintain updated credentials knowing they'll reuse them across dozens of services—turning compliance from a cost center into strategic infrastructure.
European Fintech Finds Its Identity Moment
Europe's fragmented regulatory landscape has historically hindered identity innovation. GDPR compliance, varying national registries, and MiCA crypto regulations created a patchwork that discouraged unified solutions. Duna's multi-jurisdictional architecture—built from day one for German, Dutch, French, and UK markets—turns this complexity into advantage.
The startup's verification engine dynamically adjusts to local requirements: German Handelsregisternummern checks, Dutch KvK validations, and French SIREN number confirmations all happen within a single API call. For pan-European fintechs, this eliminates maintaining separate compliance pipelines per market—a hidden cost that previously consumed engineering resources better spent on core products.
This timing proves critical as open banking and embedded finance accelerate. Every new neobank, lending platform, and crypto service needs robust business verification—yet few can justify building it themselves. Duna arrives as regulatory scrutiny intensifies, offering not just speed but audit-ready compliance trails that satisfy even the strictest financial authorities.
What This Funding Means for the Identity Ecosystem
The €30 million injection will accelerate three priorities: expanding Duna's coverage to 30+ European business registries by year-end, launching real-time beneficial ownership mapping for complex corporate structures, and piloting cross-platform credential sharing with five anchor clients.
Critically, Duna isn't chasing consumer identity—a crowded space dominated by Apple, Google, and specialized players. By focusing exclusively on business verification, the startup avoids direct competition with tech giants while addressing a $12 billion addressable market growing at 22% annually. Enterprise clients pay premiums for accuracy and compliance certainty—making this a capital-efficient path to profitability.
For founders emerging from scaling companies like Stripe, the lesson is clear: deep domain expertise in unsexy infrastructure layers creates defensible opportunities. Duna exemplifies how "boring" compliance problems, when reimagined through modern API design and network effects thinking, can birth category-defining companies.
As digital commerce increasingly hinges on verified trust between entities, Duna's timing couldn't be better. The world needs fewer passwords and more portable proof—especially for the businesses powering tomorrow's economy. With elite backing and founders who've lived this problem at scale, Duna isn't just simplifying onboarding. It's laying rails for a more trustworthy digital economy—one verified business at a time.
