RedOwl, a Melbourne start-up that builds AI financial controls for large companies, has raised A$5.3m (about $3.4m) in a seed round led by Tidal Ventures, Australian FinTech reported on 15 October 2026.
Earlier backers, including CP Ventures, also invested. Australian FinTech said Tidal led the round at a pre-money valuation of A$38.4m (about $24.6m); Startup Daily reported the same A$38.4m figure without saying whether it was measured before or after the new money.
The company was founded in 2024, according to Startup Daily. It was picked for Mastercard's Start Path programme for start-ups in the same year.
“We built RedOwl to ask that question before payment, when the finance team can still check the details, fix the problem or stop the transaction.”Jitto Arulampalam, Co-founder and CEO, RedOwl
What RedOwl does
RedOwl targets what finance teams call margin leakage: a supplier invoice above the agreed rate, a service delivered but never billed, or a card purchase that breaks company policy. Its view is that these errors often share one cause, which is that money is approved without full knowledge of what the business has already agreed and authorised.
The software sits on top of the finance systems a company already runs. It draws on what the start-up calls organisational memory, such as contracts, policies, rate cards, approvals and past decisions, and uses it to judge each transaction before payment, acting as a control layer over accounts payable and card spending. For retailers, telecoms operators or property managers, that can mean matching millions of supplier charges against millions of items billed to customers.
Longer term, RedOwl wants to connect AI agents that buy and pay on a company's behalf to payment rails, with controls built in so they stay inside the limits the business has set.
The founders and customers
Co-founder and chief executive Jitto Arulampalam started the business with Thushan Shanmugarajah after Arulampalam was hit by a large invoice fraud that existing systems and audits did not catch. Shanmugarajah, who was then working in forensic finance, worked out how it had happened.
RedOwl counts ASX 200 companies Aussie Broadband and Vicinity Centres as customers and is working with businesses in telecommunications, retail, technology, property management and construction. It holds Amazon Web Services ISV Accelerate status and is sold through AWS Marketplace. Since joining Start Path it has worked with Mastercard on applying transaction-level controls to commercial payments.
Paul Monnington, Mastercard's division president for Australasia, said payment controls need to keep pace as more payment decisions happen in real time, and that the two companies are testing how richer business context can be combined with Mastercard's In Control features.
Who invested and what the money is for
Kieran O'Neill, a principal at Tidal Ventures, said the deal fits the firm's "Systems of Work" thesis that software should help carry out business processes rather than only record them. He said RedOwl turns fragmented information into a control layer for payments.
RedOwl will use the money to keep developing its platform, roll it out to more large businesses and grow in Australia and abroad through banking, payments and cloud partners. The company has not disclosed revenue, headcount or the size of its earlier funding.
Company website: redowl.ai