Taxnova Enters a16z Speedrun to Revamp R&D Tax Claims

Taxnova, giving finance and engineering teams a faster, safer, and more controlled way to claim what they’re entitled to, led by George Nichkov and Maria Malykh, has raised $1 million in pre-seed funding from a16z speedrun, s16vc, Karaoke Club, and 20 operators from tech companies.

R&D tax relief lowers tax bills or provides cash for qualifying innovation. In 2023–24, UK companies claimed £7.6B, while the US federal government issues $32B annually, with 30+ states offering additional credits.

Most tech companies struggle to claim it efficiently. Engineering teams reconstruct months of work from memory, finance waits months for visibility, and audit scrutiny is rising; UK enquiries jumped from 0.5% to 20% in three years. Data collection alone consumes 75% of the effort, making it primarily a data challenge.

Taxnova connects to tools like GitHub, Jira, Slack, and Notion to automatically capture evidence of qualifying R&D work. It identifies projects, generates technical narratives, calculates eligible R&D percentages, and produces audit-ready documentation, all without interrupting product development.

Customers report major time savings; Steven Kleinegesse, Director of Research at causaLens, said, "That's already closing in on 80% of our work."

The platform complements existing tax advisors and maintains consistency across multi-region operations in the UK, US, and beyond.

While working at Gett, the finance team faced the challenge of applying for R&D tax claims. The vendor provided a spreadsheet, but the criteria for qualifying projects were unclear. Engineers had to manually gather data from Slack, Jira, and internal documents, a time-consuming process that pulled focus from product work.

This experience highlighted a clear need for automation. Leveraging expertise in finance, consulting, and product management, Taxnova was developed to simplify and streamline R&D tax claims. During beta testing, the platform has already helped dozens of companies secure relief efficiently.