With Tabby, a former accountant is using AI to make accountants obsolete

In May of 2025, Ahad Ali was a successful accountant overseeing a team of 20 people and handling more than 2,000 returns a year. However, Ali soon grew frustrated with the frictions of traditional accounting software like QuickBooks, realizing that small businesses do not need better accounting software, but rather less of it. To solve this, Ali created Tabby, a real-time bookkeeping interface that handles clients' paperwork while providing up-to-the-minute data on business profit and loss. Utilizing Plaid to import live account data and artificial intelligence to build a financial health dashboard, Tabby aims to automate bookkeeping tasks entirely for small businesses and accounting firms alike. Fourteen months in, Tabby has 5,500 small businesses using the platform, generating roughly $100,000 in annual recurring revenue. Operated by a tight team of seven, the platform seeks to transform bookkeeping into a seamless, automated monthly utility similar to internet access.