Pre-ChatGPT Startups Dying, Power Crunch Ahead.
Hundreds of fintech startups built before ChatGPT are being wiped out. Here's what that means for the tools your firm depends on.
The Fintech Tools Your Firm Pays For Are Running Out of Time
CNBC reported this week that the AI boom has left hundreds of pre-ChatGPT startups stranded — over $250 billion has concentrated into OpenAI and Anthropic, starving earlier-vintage fintechs of oxygen. If your firm is running AP automation, expense management, or close workflow tools built between 2018 and 2022, there is a real chance the vendor behind them is either pivoting hard, raising a down round, or quietly winding down. This isn't theoretical: several well-known accounting automation players have already been acqui-hired or shut down in the past 18 months. The implication is straightforward — your workflow dependencies deserve a vendor health check the same way your clients' balance sheets do.
If your automation stack was built before 2022 and hasn't had a major AI update, ask your vendor for their product roadmap — and get the answer in writing.The Accountants Who Will Be Fine Are Already Doing One Thing Differently
The pre-ChatGPT startup collapse is a useful mirror: companies that built narrow, single-function tools got commoditized overnight once foundation models could replicate the core feature for near zero marginal cost. The same pressure applies to individual accountants who built their value on one repeatable task — reconciliations, data entry, basic variance analysis. The professionals holding ground right now are the ones who can take an AI output, spot what's wrong with it, and explain why to a client. That's not a soft skill, it's a technical one — and it's learnable. Start by running your next reconciliation through an AI tool and then auditing every line it touched.
Pick one recurring task this week, run it through an AI tool, then manually verify every output. Do that ten times and you'll know exactly where the tool breaks — that knowledge is your moat.Zennify's Leadership Shake-Up Signals Where Salesforce-Based Finance Automation Is Heading
Zennify — a Salesforce, data engineering, and AI consultancy serving financial services — just named a new CEO while its former CEO moved to Anthropic to lead global post-sale engagement. That personnel flow is a signal, not just a press release: the firms closest to regulated-industry AI deployments are now being pulled directly into the foundation model layer. For accounting firms that use Salesforce as a CRM or client portal, this matters because the AI capabilities baked into those platforms are about to get significantly more aggressive — document processing, client communication drafts, and workflow triggers are all on the roadmap. If you haven't looked at what your Salesforce instance can actually do with AI today, you're probably six months behind where your clients expect you to be.
If your firm runs Salesforce, pull up the Einstein and Agentforce feature list this week — at least half of what's there is already included in your license and most firms aren't using it.Your AP Automation Vendor Is Not Your Partner — They're Your Next Integration Problem
The conventional wisdom is that specialized AP automation tools are safer bets than building in-house because they're focused. That logic is inverting. As foundation models get embedded directly into ERPs — NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Microsoft Dynamics — the standalone AP automation layer becomes redundant overhead with an extra API call and a separate contract. The pre-ChatGPT startup die-off isn't just a VC story; it's the early signal that the middle tier of the accounting software stack is collapsing toward the ERP on one end and the AI model on the other. Firms that locked into five-year contracts with point solutions in 2021 are already feeling this.
The most expensive software decision you'll make in the next two years isn't a new tool — it's the contract renewal you sign without asking whether your ERP already does the same thing.