Kaaj, an agentic AI credit intelligence platform that simplifies small business lending, announced it secured $3.8 million in seed funding led by Kindred Ventures, with contributions from Better Tomorrow Ventures and others. Established in 2024, Kaaj’s aim / goal is to expand access to affordable capital for small businesses.
Using agentic AI workflows to help lenders analyze end-to-end loan packages and create decision-ready analysis for small business lending, Kaaj claims that it “reduces lender costs and accelerates decision-making.”
Kaaj’s founding team members reportedly combines AI expertise and risk experience.
Utsav Shah, co-founder and CEO, spent time working over at Uber and Cruise, building out AI-enabled decision-making systems.
Shivi Sharma, co-founder and President, is familiar with credit and fraud risk, formerly having worked in some capacity at American Express, Uber, and Varo Bank.
The capital injection will aim to enable product development and “expand Kaaj’s reach across the U.S. small-business lending market and the equipment finance market.”
Small business formation has surged “over the past two years, with U.S. small businesses numbering more than 33 million.”
But access to capital remains a “critical challenge.”
According to the latest Federal Reserve Small Business Credit Survey, approximately 50% of small business loan applicants “fail to receive the full amount of capital they need, leaving businesses undercapitalized at crucial growth stages.”
A reason cited for this gap is that for most lenders, loans under $1m are not profitable “using current manual, time-intensive underwriting approaches.”
To effectively address this, Kaaj’s platform deploys AI agents that work together to automate the entire credit analysis process, “from business verification and cash flow analysis to asset valuation, financial analysis, and risk assessment.”
What usually takes underwriters several days of tedious and laborious manual work across thousands of documents, Kaaj completes the work in “under three minutes, delivering decision-ready analysis that integrates seamlessly into existing loan origination systems.”
The platform has now reportedly processed more than $5 billion in loan applications and has a customer base of lenders and brokers with companies such as Amur Equipment Finance, Quality Equipment Finance, and Fundr.
Kaaj serves lenders and brokers, who represent the majority of small business financing activity. For lenders, the platform enables scaling without needing proportional headcount growth, “allowing a team processing 500 applications monthly to handle 2,000 applications with the same staff.” For brokers, Kaaj adds intelligent lender “matching capabilities, routing deals to the most appropriate financing sources.”
By integrating with CRM systems such as Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, HubSpot, Zoho, Kaaj goes live in around 3 weeks.
Beyond speed, Kaaj addresses a critical but “overlooked problem in commercial lending: inconsistency.” Via behavioral studies shadowing credit underwriters, Kaaj’s team discovered that “decision-making varies dramatically by factors such as time of day, workload, and day of week: an inconsistency that frustrates brokers and borrowers.”
Every deal Kaaj analyzes reportedly receives the same “comprehensive due diligence, regardless of external factors.” This consistency enhances decision quality while making the process “more transparent and audit-ready, critical factors in today’s regulatory environment.”
The platform’s transparency is said to be built into its architecture.
Every data point, calculation, and insight is reportedly traceable and verifiable, ensuring lenders can demonstrate “clear audit trails for regulators while maintaining full control over final lending decisions.”