Kintsugi – The Next‑Generation AI Agent for B2B Tax Compliance

Every week, we highlight an AI‑powered app that’s actually solving real problems for B2B and Cloud companies. This week: Kintsugi.

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The Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About

One dirty little secret of scaling a B2B company that creeps up on you: sales‑tax compliance is a nightmare, and most founders ignore it until it’s borderline too late.

You hit $100 K in revenue in Texas. Congrats—you now have nexus. Then California. Then New York. Suddenly you’re supposed to be tracking economic thresholds in 45+ states, each with different rules, different rates, and different filing deadlines.

Most founders do one of three things:

1. Ignore it entirely (until the audit letter arrives)

2. Hire a tax accountant (expensive, still mostly manual)

3. Cobble together spreadsheets (soul‑crushing, error‑prone)

None of these scale. And the penalties for getting it wrong? They add up fast. We’ve seen companies hit with six‑figure back‑tax bills right before a fundraise. Not a great look in due diligence.

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What Kintsugi Actually Does

Kintsugi is an AI‑native sales‑tax automation platform built specifically for high‑growth B2B and e‑commerce businesses.

Short version: connect your billing system, and Kintsugi handles everything else.

Here’s what that actually means:

• Nexus Monitoring. Kintsugi tracks your sales across all 50 states (and 50+ countries) and alerts you the moment you trigger tax obligations. No more guessing. No more spreadsheets tracking thresholds.

• Automatic Registration. When you hit nexus in a new state, Kintsugi can register you automatically. One click. Done.

• AI‑Powered Product Classification. Different products get taxed differently (SaaS is taxable in some states, not others; digital goods are a whole separate mess). Kintsugi’s AI automatically classifies your products and applies the correct tax treatment.

• AutoFile. The platform calculates what you owe, files your returns, and remits payment. Every state. Every month. Automatically.

• Real‑Time Dashboards. Your finance team gets full visibility into liabilities, exposure, and filing status across every jurisdiction.

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The Backstory

Kintsugi was founded by Pujun Bhatnagar, a former senior ML engineer at Meta. Before writing a single line of code, he spent 18 months doing sales tax by hand for e‑commerce and SaaS companies—manually calculating sales tax. He made his first employees do the same thing.

Why? Because you can’t automate what you don’t deeply understand. That hands‑on experience shaped how Kintsugi’s AI models work—they built their classification and calculation engines in‑house rather than relying on generic LLMs, which Bhatnagar claims makes them significantly more accurate than competitors.

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The Traction

Kintsugi launched in August 2023. Here’s where they are now:

• 2,500+ customers

• $10 M+ ARR and 0.1 % churn rate — no one leaves

• $150 M+ valuation

• Vertex partnership launched October 2025 — bringing enterprise‑grade tax‑engine accuracy to the SMB market

The Vertex partnership is a big deal. Vertex is the 800‑pound gorilla in enterprise tax automation (public company, been around since 1978, powers tax for huge enterprises). The “Kintsugi powered by Vertex” product combines Vertex’s tax engine and global rules with Kintsugi’s modern integrations and AI workflows.

Translation: enterprise accuracy, startup speed.

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Pricing That Doesn’t Punish Growth

One thing we love about Kintsugi’s model: they don’t charge hefty onboarding fees or lock you into annual contracts before you’ve seen value.

• Free to start — connect your systems, see your exposure, no credit card required

• $100 per filing — pay as you go

• Custom plans — for higher volume

Compare that to legacy players charging $5 K+ just to get started, and you see why they’ve grown so fast.

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Integrations

Kintsugi connects to the tools B2B companies actually use:

• Stripe

• Chargebee

• QuickBooks

• Shopify

• BigCommerce

• Amazon

• WooCommerce

• Open API for everything else

Setup is no‑code. Most companies are live in a day.

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Who Should Use This

Kintsugi is built for:

• B2B and SaaS companies selling across multiple states (especially once you’re past $500 K ARR and compliance complexity kicks in)

• E‑commerce businesses with multi‑state or international sales

• Finance and RevOps teams tired of manual tax calculations

• Any founder who’s been ignoring sales tax and knows the bill is coming

If you’re a local business selling in one state, this is probably overkill. But if you’re scaling nationally or globally, this is the kind of infrastructure that lets you focus on growth instead of compliance paperwork.

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Sales Tax Is the Problem You Need to Solve. AI Makes It So Much Better.

Sales tax isn’t sexy. Nobody starts a company because they’re excited about nexus thresholds and tax remittance.

But getting it wrong can cost you real money—in penalties, in audit risk, and in deals that fall apart when buyers see compliance gaps.

Kintsugi built AI‑native automation for a problem most founders try to ignore. And with 1,100+ customers in just over a year, it’s clear they’ve hit a nerve.

Worth a look if compliance is on your “I’ll deal with it later” list. Later has a way of showing up faster than you think.

trykintsugi.com