Duna Secures €30M Series A to Build Global Business Identity Verification Infrastructure

Duna, a business identity verification startup founded by former Stripe engineers, has successfully closed a €30 million Series A funding round led by Alphabet's growth fund CapitalG. The investment positions the company as one of the most well-funded European ventures to emerge from the so-called "Stripe mafia" ecosystem.

The fintech company has become a prominent founder factory, with alumni launching numerous successful startups. Anthropic president Daniela Amodei and OpenAI president Gregory Brockman both count themselves among former Stripe employees who have gone on to build significant companies.

Company Overview and Mission

Headquartered in Germany and the Netherlands, Duna was co-founded by Duco Van Lanschot and David Schreiber. The startup addresses a critical pain point in the fintech sector: streamlining the corporate customer onboarding process while reducing friction typically associated with business identity verification and fraud prevention measures.

The company's client roster includes Plaid, demonstrating strong market validation. Duna's technology enables fintech platforms to onboard business customers more efficiently, significantly reducing the churn rates that plague traditional KYB (Know Your Business) processes.

Strategic Investor Network

The cap table reflects deep industry expertise and validation from key fintech players:

• Current Stripe COO Michael Coogan

• Former Stripe CTO David Singleton

• Former Stripe COO Claire Hughes Johnson

• Adyen CRCO Mariëtte Swart

• Adyen CFO Ethan Tandowsky

CapitalG, which has backed Stripe since co-leading its Series D in 2016, led the round. Index Ventures, which led Duna's €10.7 million seed round in May 2025, participated alongside Puzzle Ventures and Snowflake chairman Frank Slootman.

Competitive Positioning and Differentiation

According to Van Lanschot, Duna occupies a unique position that doesn't directly compete with payment processors like Stripe or Adyen. The platform requires granular, company-specific controls that make it impractical for payment providers to offer as a standalone product.

"It requires such fine-grained controls that change on a company-by-company basis, that an Adyen or a Stripe isn't going to spin out their business onboarding as a separate product where another enterprise customer can change all of the configurations," Van Lanschot explained.

While competitors like Jumio and Veriff exist in the KYB space, Duna differentiates itself by generating proprietary data rather than aggregating existing data sources, which are often incomplete or outdated.

Long-term Vision: Global Trust Infrastructure

Duna's strategic roadmap extends beyond simple verification services. The company aims to build a global trust infrastructure that functions as a digital passport for businesses, enabling them 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 for every business. So you can reuse your file from onboarding on Moss to onboard with Plaid, or you can reuse it to open up a bank account," Van Lanschot stated.

This vision resonated strongly with Alex Nichols, the CapitalG general partner who led the investment. "I would say the common thing I look for in my investments are some sort of network effects, or more formal scale advantage," Nichols noted. "I also love it when founders have an earned insight about a problem they may not known about otherwise, and this is a very good example of that."

Go-to-Market Strategy: Network Effects Through Clusters

To accelerate network effects before achieving full scale, Duna is implementing a strategic clustering approach. The team identifies "patches of networks" — small, interconnected groups of companies that already share relationships:

• Manufacturing companies with shared customers

• Investment firms with overlapping limited partners

• Companies operating within the same small geographic markets

This approach enables immediate value creation within tight-knit business communities, even before achieving comprehensive network coverage.

Market Opportunity

The addressable market is substantial. Van Lanschot highlighted that in the Netherlands alone, the four largest banks employ approximately 14,000 compliance personnel, with half focused on business verification processes.

While Duna won't immediately replace these roles, AI-powered automation can deliver significant cost savings and revenue generation even before full network effects materialize. The ultimate vision positions Duna as the infrastructure layer for one-click business onboarding — analogous to Amazon's one-click checkout or Stripe Link for B2B transactions.

Nichols characterized the opportunity as "the rare chance to rebuild something as foundational as a Visa and create an amazing business in the process."