CHICAGO, Sept. 16, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Iris Finance, the AI-native financial planning and analysis (FP&A) platform purpose-built for companies that sell physical products, today announced that it has raised $6.2M in seed funding led by Glasswing Ventures, with participation from Founder Collective, Hyde Park Angels (HPA), as well as existing investors Revolution's Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, Barrel Ventures, and Rosecliff Ventures.

Founded by Drew Fallon (CEO), Alexander Heckmann (COO), and Marko Iwanik (CTO), Iris launched in mid-2024 and quickly onboarded hundreds of consumer-packaged goods (CPG) brands to achieve millions in ARR and pioneer the automation of CFOs’ and COOs’ day-to-day financial decision-making. The new funding will further fuel product innovation to eliminate the latency gap of waiting on end-of-month accounting closes to make financial decisions, support the company’s growing client base of CPG brands, and expand go-to-market initiatives.

Addressing a Critical Market Pain Point

Physical product businesses face mounting financial pressure and technological challenges. Cash flow mismanagement contributes to 82% of small business failures, with 70% of SMBs holding less than four months of cash reserves. Data quality and accessibility are the primary hindrances to FP&A professionals’ technological success, according to the 2025 AFP FP&A Benchmarking Survey Report: Technology and Data.

The company’s proprietary database platform, Iris DB, automatically ingests sales, marketing, accounting, and supply-chain data from a variety of sources, including Shopify and Amazon, NetSuite and third-party logistics providers, TikTok and Google Ads, into its proprietary CPG-specific database and normalizes and enriches the data to enable customers to gain immediate visibility into their financial and operational performance within minutes, not months.

Iris’ founding team has uniquely relevant experience for the problem the company solves: Fallon previously served as COO/CFO for high-growth CPG brand Mad Rabbit. Heckmann, previously on the founding team of Clean.io a cyber security company who serviced the Fortune 100 was acquired by HUMAN, brings critical compliance expertise in handling sensitive financial data, and Iwanik, having built platforms for highly sensitive federal government applications, knows how to combine technical product management and engineering experience with business and finance to drive results.

Transforming Financial Operations for CPG Companies

Iris transforms financial operations for CPG companies by delivering:

• Machine learning-powered financial modeling with real-time profit-and-loss visibility
• Real-time profitability and margin tracking across customers, retailers, and SKU levels
• Weekly cash flow forecasting and demand prediction capabilities
• AI-enabled benchmarking powered by cross-company learnings to identify improvements in cost structures, margins, and marketing mix
• An AI Agent, "Fin,” which enables finance teams to query data, build scenarios, and surface insights without spreadsheets or traditional business intelligence (BI) software
  

Iris’s platform comes with pre-configured connectors and verticalized data definitions to get new customers up and running in minutes. The platform’s vertical, full-stack approach replaces the need for separate ETL pipelines, data warehouses, BI dashboards, planning software, and additional analyst headcount. At smaller brands, Iris can even substitute for fractional CFOs.

"Inventoried business models have a very unique challenge in that you have multiple products, all with different margin profiles, selling in sometimes dozens of different places. This makes it hard to understand how profitable your business is in real-time and makes financial planning a huge challenge," said Drew Fallon, Co-Founder & CEO at Iris. "Iris solves this problem by vertically integrating the data and application layers into an AI-native system that allows agents to access clean, structured data in real time to streamline and improve sales and operations planning processes."

“Physical product businesses operate in a world where inventory fluctuations, seasonal demand, and complex supply chain dynamics create challenges that purely digital businesses do not face. These challenges necessitate a purpose-built, vertical-focused financial and operational system,” said Rudina Seseri, Founder and Managing Partner at Glasswing Ventures. “Drew, Alex, and Marko have founded Iris with AI at its core. By building the infrastructure, in the form of their vertical-specific database, Iris DB, they have created the bedrock to transform how data is ingested and processed at these companies. By building the applications on top of that, such as forecasting, margin tracking, and advanced business intelligence, they deliver unprecedented results and ROI to their customers. Iris has turned what once were challenges for brands into strategic and operational advantages."

Strategic Growth Investment

Iris will deploy the seed capital to:

• Accelerate go-to-market initiatives and brand partnerships to expand market reach
• Enhance product features, particularly in AI forecasting, cohort analytics, and cross-company benchmarking capabilities
• Grow the team, including hiring customer success and engineering talent to support rapid scaling
  

About Iris:
Iris is the AI-native CFO platform for inventoried companies, offering real-time margin tracking, automated forecasting, benchmarking, and cohort insights. Built specifically for businesses that sell physical products, Iris empowers brands to manage profits, cash flow, and growth with precision through its AI-native platform and proprietary CPG-focused database. Learn more at https://www.irisfinance.co/.

About Glasswing Ventures:
Glasswing Ventures is a first-capital-in venture capital firm dedicated to investing in startups applying AI and frontier technology to enterprise and cybersecurity markets. The firm was founded by visionary partners with decades of experience in these markets, a disciplined investment approach, and a strong track record of industry-leading returns. Glasswing leverages its deep domain expertise and world-leading advisory councils to invest in exceptional founders who transform markets and revolutionize industries. Visit Glasswing Ventures for more information.

Media Contact:
Ilona Mohacsi
PenVine PR for Iris Finance
ilonam@penvine.com 
+1 631 764 3729

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