Pryce Yebesi has raised new funding in his next era as a founder.

Yebesi co-founded Utopia Labs at the age of 21 alongside Kaito Cunningham (CEO), Jason Chong, and Alexander Wu. The venture offered crypto payments and crypto treasury management, and was “trusted by leading DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) and crypto companies to streamline operations, manage payroll, and consolidate financial reporting,” as AFROTECH™ previously reported.

Yebesi also dropped out of college to focus on Utopia Labs, which had been supported by a $1.5 million raise in 2021 and was later acquired by Coinbase in November 2024. According to information shared with AFROTECH™, Yebesi then began working as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, and through his observations he recognized small business owners were challenged by accounting software.

This prompted the launch of a new brainchild in the fintech space, Open Ledger, which was established with the help of his former advisor who became his co-founder, Ashtyn Bell. It leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to simplify accounting tasks.

“At Utopia Labs, customer obsession was one of our standout strengths. My co-founder, Kaito, who’s now an angel investor, truly championed this focus, and it’s something I’m excited to bring to Open Ledger,” Yebesi said in an email interview with AFROTECH™. “In embedded fintech, the best experiences emerge when you deeply support customers who are building innovative solutions and share genuine excitement for their vision. That same commitment to customer success will be at the heart of what we do at Open Ledger.”

He continued, “Additionally, I’ve learned the importance of driving a bold vision — not just asking if something is possible but figuring out how to make it possible. At Utopia, I think we could have leaned further into that mindset. At Open Ledger, we’re doubling down on our mission to completely redefine where accounting products live, use AI to recreate how people interact with these products, and evolve them in step with new monetary systems.”

How It Works

With Open Ledger, which has already secured clients in vertical SaaS, payments, and blockchain, Yebesi believes it will serve 1 million customers by the end of 2025. This places great belief in its offerings, which can detect and gather all data sources for its companies. At the core, the platform will build ledgers that are influenced by machine learning and large language models (LLMs) to make accounting more efficient and accurate.

“Our approach is unique because we’ve reimagined the data layer for financial transactions,” Yebesi explained. “We spent seven months developing and refining a new data primitive that allows transaction databases to interact directly with large language models (LLMs) without exposing customer data to any base models. This innovation minimizes context limits, latency, and security risks, enabling a much more seamless and secure interaction between AI and financial data.”

Bell (COO) said: “Accounting is a critical function for every business. Yet, it remains difficult because financial data is fragmented. Open Ledger brings data together in one place to give intelligent systems comprehensive financial context to execute accounting workflows more efficiently and produce outputs more accurately.”

$3M Raise

Open Ledger has received $3 million in a pre-seed funding round as the company is looking to scale its team of engineers and establish new partnerships. The round was led by Kindred Ventures with participation from Blank Ventures and angel investors including Bridge CEO Zach Abrams participated in the round.

“Open Ledger’s mission is to bring the accounting process into the modern era,” Yebesi mentioned. “Today, most payment products function as data products, yet accounting tools are still treated as separate and outdated systems. We believe AI can bridge that gap, enabling large, complex accounting suites to become simpler and more streamlined.”