Investment
We’re excited to welcome Niural. The company, co-founded by Nami Baral and Nabin Banskota,
is developing a system of intelligence for the CFO suite with its AI-enabled payments and compliance technology. Niural enables mid-sized companies to handle payroll, PEO, benefits and vendor payments in the US and in over 150 countries worldwide. M13 participated in a $31 million Series A round into Niural led by Marathon Management Partners.
M13 joins $31M Series A to back Niural’s AI-native payroll platform: why we’re excited about Niural
The human resources software sector is experiencing significant growth and innovation as more cloud-based, AI and automation technologies are introduced. The global payroll market, valued at around $100 billion in 2024, is expected to rise to $133 billion in three years.
M13 believes there’s room for improvement within today's human resources sector, especially when it comes to international payments in local as well as digital currencies for use cases, including global payroll.
The Niural team understands the complexity of this problem and has built a category-defining product for payroll related payments with an entirely new tech stack.
The company’s core product innovation is EMMA, an AI agent capable of executing end-to-end workflows with high accuracy, targeting mid-sized companies that need sophisticated payroll and benefits solutions but lack extensive resources.
What isn’t working is that companies are forced to integrate with so many third parties that pull and push data out of different systems, causing accuracy of that data to decline, according to M13 Principal Morgan Blumberg.
“However, when you're the one source of truth you can really push the bounds of what [AI] agents are capable of,” Blumberg said. “That’s the bold, long-term vision of Niural — to be the system of record and actually take on so many different aspects of not only payroll, but eventually benefits as well.”
M13 invested in Niural due to this team's expertise, forward-thinking technology stack and the potential to build a generational company that can transform payroll and financial services through AI and innovative infrastructure.
Niural is solving a massive, overlooked problem with a truly AI-native approach. Their platform delivers immediate, measurable ROI for CFOs and HR leaders by automating the most complex, error-prone workflows in payroll and compliance. We’re excited to support Niural as they redefine what’s possible in global financial operations.” - M13 Principal Morgan Blumberg
Meet Niural: AI-powered global payroll and HR compliance startup
The definition of the workplace continues to change, but went through perhaps its most significant change in the past five years. The workplace went from a singular location with most employees working in-office to multiple locations and a diverse employee base working all over the world.
Niural is going after the Professional Employer Organization (PEO) model — where an outside firm provides human resources services to customers — with its AI-native global PEO platform aimed at mid-market businesses who’ve previously dealt with red tape, unhelpful middlemen and compliance issues.
Why now: HR software is ripe for disruption with AI and automation
Nami Baral and co-founder Nabin Banskota began thinking about the problem from the perspective of the direct deposit, and how important that was to employees.
“Every company wants to be top-of-wallet, but to do that you need access to direct deposit,” Baral said. “Companies like ADP, Paychex and Paycom are all using data as part of their system of record, but are at the core, payroll processors, rather than being the financial infrastructure for businesses and employees.”
However, many companies in this sector are not using it to its potential, from a technology and infrastructure perspective, which is why we aren’t seeing a lot of innovation in human resources, she said.
Baral and Banskota set out to build Niural three years ago and were heads down until about a year ago. Niural’s co-employment model eliminates the complexity of payroll, benefits, compliance and financial operations. Its target markets are growing small businesses and mid-market companies that want the HR capabilities of an enterprise-level business, but without the overhead.
Additionally, Niural's proprietary tax engine and payment infrastructure technology provides seamless workforce management across both domestic and international operations.
EMMA, Niural’s AI agent, enters HR
Niural’s core innovation, EMMA, is an AI “super agent” that not only advises but executes complex payroll and compliance tasks with near-perfect accuracy. Early adopters report over 60 hours saved monthly and significant cost reductions, underscoring EMMA’s transformative potential.
“I saw a lot of opportunities there, but more importantly, it is one of those crucial building blocks if you truly wanted to build a generational company that businesses and employees could use forever,” Baral said. “We are rethinking the payment rails of how a company like that could be built.”
Companies rely on multiple vendors within their tech stack. But often this creates fragmentation because few companies can solve a problem within one system of record, Baral said.
“You used to be able to deal with one company as your singular system of record, but that is not true anymore due to increased globalization,” she said.
In addition, it's not easy to leverage artificial intelligence to create intelligence without a single source of truth, Baral said.
That’s where Niural comes in. It incorporates AI intelligence into a consolidated system of record, something Baral said was missing in the industry from a technological perspective.
“EMMA is the personification of all the different actions that our AI agent can do,” Baral said. “Internally, we have a term for it, called ‘super agent,’ meaning it is able to solve multiple aspects of your operations, whether it's payroll, handling expenses, PTOs or AP & AR payments.”
Most of the AI agents that you see deployed today tend to be AI agents that go and search for articles in a knowledge base and reflect those articles to the user whenever you ask them a question, Baral said. This makes them simple reasoning agents that are incapable of executing actions.
EMMA, on the other hand, will not only tell you what to do, but can also take actions on your behalf, she said. That execution agent is what Baral calls Niural’s “secret sauce” and EMMA’s “superpower” because it can do so with extreme accuracy.
“Accuracy is important when you are running sensitive actions like making payments” she said. “It is very, very difficult to release high-accuracy AI agents in this ecosystem if you do not personally have experience deploying extremely accurate agents in highly sensitive industries.”
Co-founders Baral and Banskota on rebuilding global HR infrastructure
Baral and Banskota developed their own internal orchestration and workflows to be able to get that accuracy. This stemmed from their background building AI agents in financial environments.
After graduating from Harvard, Baral was an investment banker before decided she wanted to be a builder. The first startup she joined was acquired by Twitter, where she worked for six years before starting Harvest in 2018 with Banskota.
The company was an AI superagent that helps people reduce their debt and improve their credit. They worked in some of the earlier versions of large language models — many years before ChatGPT — built to train a chatbot. It gained success and was later acquired by Acorns in 2021.
Drawing on that deep experience building AI systems for financial services, Baral and Banskota launched Niural to create intelligent infrastructure for the modern workplace.
“Other companies don’t think of themselves as true financial infrastructure for the company or as building intelligence for the CFO suite, but Niural does both,” Baral said.
Controlling the stack: how Niural enables accuracy and speed at scale
AI works here because there are a lot of mundane and manual tasks in payroll, such as filing taxes with the U.S. government, Blumberg said.
“There’s a lot that can be automated with AI, including the benefit side of things,” she said. “Tax calculation engines and other complex, often manual processes can be automated with AI to za more accurate degree than humans. That makes it perfect for the accuracy required on the payroll side.”
What prevents payroll companies from leaning in on some of the AI efficiencies is that they are so reliant on third-party services, so they can only do so much themselves, said M13 Principal Mark Grace.
“However, when you control the stack, like Niural does, you have more surface area for improvement and efficiency,” Grace said.
More than capital: how M13 supports Niural’s product and talent strategy
Now armed with $31 million in new funding, the company wants to continue serving its customers through geographical expansion and further developing its AI technology, Baral said.
The team and vision that Niural had for wanting to build a complete system of record, were just a few of the reasons Blumberg and Grace were attracted to the company.
That big of a technology stack took almost two years, but is now “differentiated, ambitious and really, really impressive,” according to Blumberg.
“That kind of building takes longer and is harder, but it’s paying dividends now, especially with the rollout of EMMA,” Grace added. “I don't know if the same would be possible for a lot of other companies that started five years ago, just based on the tech they're building on.”
In addition to providing capital, Baral said M13 has shown up in myriad ways from supporting recruitment to business development to product review to go-to-market.
Being a repeat founder, there tends to be a certain way that founders like to build companies, and working with M13 opened Niural up to “amazing talent that helps us in multiple different ways,” Baral said.
“The thing that I found very, very pleasant from the beginning was that every person that we have interacted with at M13 has brought an immense amount of value to those interactions,” Baral said. “I cannot say that about every investor that we work with. M13 is available through thick and thin.”
The company has been able to go to Blumberg, Grace, and other M13ers for so many different things, Baral said.
“It's the kind of emotional support that goes far beyond the check,” she added. “I wish more investors were like that.”
Read more about Nami Baral and Nabin Banskota
From Startup to Enterprise: Scaling Globally with Niural AI | Nabin Banskota | Ep238
The Human Roll - Women in Tech & Niural
Here are 39 startup founders using their business chops to help other founders prosper
Follow Niural
Investment
We’re excited to welcome Niural. The company, co-founded by Nami Baral and Nabin Banskota,
is developing a system of intelligence for the CFO suite with its AI-enabled payments and compliance technology. Niural enables mid-sized companies to handle payroll, PEO, benefits and vendor payments in the US and in over 150 countries worldwide. M13 participated in a $31 million Series A round into Niural led by Marathon Management Partners.
M13 joins $31M Series A to back Niural’s AI-native payroll platform: why we’re excited about Niural
The human resources software sector is experiencing significant growth and innovation as more cloud-based, AI and automation technologies are introduced. The global payroll market, valued at around $100 billion in 2024, is expected to rise to $133 billion in three years.
M13 believes there’s room for improvement within today's human resources sector, especially when it comes to international payments in local as well as digital currencies for use cases, including global payroll.
The Niural team understands the complexity of this problem and has built a category-defining product for payroll related payments with an entirely new tech stack.
The company’s core product innovation is EMMA, an AI agent capable of executing end-to-end workflows with high accuracy, targeting mid-sized companies that need sophisticated payroll and benefits solutions but lack extensive resources.
What isn’t working is that companies are forced to integrate with so many third parties that pull and push data out of different systems, causing accuracy of that data to decline, according to M13 Principal Morgan Blumberg.
“However, when you're the one source of truth you can really push the bounds of what [AI] agents are capable of,” Blumberg said. “That’s the bold, long-term vision of Niural — to be the system of record and actually take on so many different aspects of not only payroll, but eventually benefits as well.”
M13 invested in Niural due to this team's expertise, forward-thinking technology stack and the potential to build a generational company that can transform payroll and financial services through AI and innovative infrastructure.
Niural is solving a massive, overlooked problem with a truly AI-native approach. Their platform delivers immediate, measurable ROI for CFOs and HR leaders by automating the most complex, error-prone workflows in payroll and compliance. We’re excited to support Niural as they redefine what’s possible in global financial operations.” - M13 Principal Morgan Blumberg
Meet Niural: AI-powered global payroll and HR compliance startup
The definition of the workplace continues to change, but went through perhaps its most significant change in the past five years. The workplace went from a singular location with most employees working in-office to multiple locations and a diverse employee base working all over the world.
Niural is going after the Professional Employer Organization (PEO) model — where an outside firm provides human resources services to customers — with its AI-native global PEO platform aimed at mid-market businesses who’ve previously dealt with red tape, unhelpful middlemen and compliance issues.
Why now: HR software is ripe for disruption with AI and automation
Nami Baral and co-founder Nabin Banskota began thinking about the problem from the perspective of the direct deposit, and how important that was to employees.
“Every company wants to be top-of-wallet, but to do that you need access to direct deposit,” Baral said. “Companies like ADP, Paychex and Paycom are all using data as part of their system of record, but are at the core, payroll processors, rather than being the financial infrastructure for businesses and employees.”
However, many companies in this sector are not using it to its potential, from a technology and infrastructure perspective, which is why we aren’t seeing a lot of innovation in human resources, she said.
Baral and Banskota set out to build Niural three years ago and were heads down until about a year ago. Niural’s co-employment model eliminates the complexity of payroll, benefits, compliance and financial operations. Its target markets are growing small businesses and mid-market companies that want the HR capabilities of an enterprise-level business, but without the overhead.
Additionally, Niural's proprietary tax engine and payment infrastructure technology provides seamless workforce management across both domestic and international operations.
EMMA, Niural’s AI agent, enters HR
Niural’s core innovation, EMMA, is an AI “super agent” that not only advises but executes complex payroll and compliance tasks with near-perfect accuracy. Early adopters report over 60 hours saved monthly and significant cost reductions, underscoring EMMA’s transformative potential.
“I saw a lot of opportunities there, but more importantly, it is one of those crucial building blocks if you truly wanted to build a generational company that businesses and employees could use forever,” Baral said. “We are rethinking the payment rails of how a company like that could be built.”
Companies rely on multiple vendors within their tech stack. But often this creates fragmentation because few companies can solve a problem within one system of record, Baral said.
“You used to be able to deal with one company as your singular system of record, but that is not true anymore due to increased globalization,” she said.
In addition, it's not easy to leverage artificial intelligence to create intelligence without a single source of truth, Baral said.
That’s where Niural comes in. It incorporates AI intelligence into a consolidated system of record, something Baral said was missing in the industry from a technological perspective.
“EMMA is the personification of all the different actions that our AI agent can do,” Baral said. “Internally, we have a term for it, called ‘super agent,’ meaning it is able to solve multiple aspects of your operations, whether it's payroll, handling expenses, PTOs or AP & AR payments.”
Most of the AI agents that you see deployed today tend to be AI agents that go and search for articles in a knowledge base and reflect those articles to the user whenever you ask them a question, Baral said. This makes them simple reasoning agents that are incapable of executing actions.
EMMA, on the other hand, will not only tell you what to do, but can also take actions on your behalf, she said. That execution agent is what Baral calls Niural’s “secret sauce” and EMMA’s “superpower” because it can do so with extreme accuracy.
“Accuracy is important when you are running sensitive actions like making payments” she said. “It is very, very difficult to release high-accuracy AI agents in this ecosystem if you do not personally have experience deploying extremely accurate agents in highly sensitive industries.”
Co-founders Baral and Banskota on rebuilding global HR infrastructure
Baral and Banskota developed their own internal orchestration and workflows to be able to get that accuracy. This stemmed from their background building AI agents in financial environments.
After graduating from Harvard, Baral was an investment banker before decided she wanted to be a builder. The first startup she joined was acquired by Twitter, where she worked for six years before starting Harvest in 2018 with Banskota.
The company was an AI superagent that helps people reduce their debt and improve their credit. They worked in some of the earlier versions of large language models — many years before ChatGPT — built to train a chatbot. It gained success and was later acquired by Acorns in 2021.
Drawing on that deep experience building AI systems for financial services, Baral and Banskota launched Niural to create intelligent infrastructure for the modern workplace.
“Other companies don’t think of themselves as true financial infrastructure for the company or as building intelligence for the CFO suite, but Niural does both,” Baral said.
Controlling the stack: how Niural enables accuracy and speed at scale
AI works here because there are a lot of mundane and manual tasks in payroll, such as filing taxes with the U.S. government, Blumberg said.
“There’s a lot that can be automated with AI, including the benefit side of things,” she said. “Tax calculation engines and other complex, often manual processes can be automated with AI to za more accurate degree than humans. That makes it perfect for the accuracy required on the payroll side.”
What prevents payroll companies from leaning in on some of the AI efficiencies is that they are so reliant on third-party services, so they can only do so much themselves, said M13 Principal Mark Grace.
“However, when you control the stack, like Niural does, you have more surface area for improvement and efficiency,” Grace said.
More than capital: how M13 supports Niural’s product and talent strategy
Now armed with $31 million in new funding, the company wants to continue serving its customers through geographical expansion and further developing its AI technology, Baral said.
The team and vision that Niural had for wanting to build a complete system of record, were just a few of the reasons Blumberg and Grace were attracted to the company.
That big of a technology stack took almost two years, but is now “differentiated, ambitious and really, really impressive,” according to Blumberg.
“That kind of building takes longer and is harder, but it’s paying dividends now, especially with the rollout of EMMA,” Grace added. “I don't know if the same would be possible for a lot of other companies that started five years ago, just based on the tech they're building on.”
In addition to providing capital, Baral said M13 has shown up in myriad ways from supporting recruitment to business development to product review to go-to-market.
Being a repeat founder, there tends to be a certain way that founders like to build companies, and working with M13 opened Niural up to “amazing talent that helps us in multiple different ways,” Baral said.
“The thing that I found very, very pleasant from the beginning was that every person that we have interacted with at M13 has brought an immense amount of value to those interactions,” Baral said. “I cannot say that about every investor that we work with. M13 is available through thick and thin.”
The company has been able to go to Blumberg, Grace, and other M13ers for so many different things, Baral said.
“It's the kind of emotional support that goes far beyond the check,” she added. “I wish more investors were like that.”
Read more about Nami Baral and Nabin Banskota
From Startup to Enterprise: Scaling Globally with Niural AI | Nabin Banskota | Ep238
The Human Roll - Women in Tech & Niural
Here are 39 startup founders using their business chops to help other founders prosper
Follow Niural
Read more
The views expressed here are those of the individual M13 personnel quoted and are not the views of M13 Holdings Company, LLC (“M13”) or its affiliates. This content is for general informational purposes only and does not and is not intended to constitute legal, business, investment, tax or other advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters and should not act or refrain from acting on the basis of this content. This content is not directed to any investors or potential investors, is not an offer or solicitation and may not be used or relied upon in connection with any offer or solicitation with respect to any current or future M13 investment partnership. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Unless otherwise noted, this content is intended to be current only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others. Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in funds managed by M13, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A list of investments made by funds managed by M13 is available at m13.co/portfolio.