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Estonian fintech Creem has secured €1.8M in pre-seed funding to build what it calls a “Stripe for AI” — a financial operating system designed specifically for fast-scaling AI startups.
Creem’s story showcases Estonia’s reputation as a perfect launchpad for global ideas, with FinTech among the most successful sectors, and the power of the e-Residency programme. Founded just 10 months ago by Gabriel Ferraz from Brazil and Alec Erasmus from the Netherlands, Creem has already reached $1M in annual recurring revenue without a sales team.
Ferraz (CEO) previously led Brazil’s first crypto software agency and scaled a crypto payment gateway past $200M in transaction volume, while Erasmus (Co-founder) built KYC infrastructure at Adyen ($46B market cap) and backend systems for crypto exchanges.
“Why Estonia? Estonia made it easier for me to build than anywhere else. No red tape. No gatekeeping. No BS. As a Brazilian, I’ve seen how hard it is to start a company. Paperwork, delays, restrictions, it kills momentum. But in Estonia? I got everything up and running faster than I could order lunch in São Paulo,” wrote Ferraz on LinkedIn.
The secret sauce
Creem functions as a programmable finance layer that integrates directly into developer workflows, automating multi-party payments and revenue splits, tax compliance across jurisdictions, both fiat and stablecoin transactions, and KYC regulatory requirements.
Why now? AI companies are growing faster than traditional financial tools can handle. These startups often operate with lean, globally distributed teams that need seamless payments, compliance, and revenue sharing across multiple currencies and jurisdictions from day one.
The €1.8M round was led by Practica Capital with participation from Antler and angel investors. The funding will support expansion into new markets, enhanced compliance capabilities, deeper developer API integration, and building toward what Ferraz calls “programmable organisations”— highly distributed teams that can operate at unprecedented scale and speed.
