Casca Builds AI-Native Banking Infrastructure for Small Business Lending

San Francisco-based fintech Casca is replacing decades-old banking technology with an AI-native loan origination platform designed for SBA lenders and FDIC-insured banks. Founded by Stanford University graduates, the 28-person company has raised $33 million in total funding, including a $29 million Series A round led by Canapi Ventures with participation from Y Combinator, Peterson Ventures, and bank partners including Live Oak Bank, Huntington National Bank, and Bankwell Bank.

Automating Commercial Loan Origination

Small business loans traditionally take 60 to 90 days to close due to manual document collection, back-and-forth communications, and paper-heavy workflows. Casca replaces legacy systems of record with AI-native software that automates up to 90% of manual lending tasks. Its platform features an AI agent named Sarah, which communicates with applicants via email and SMS to guide them through application steps and prepare loan files for human underwriters.

The platform converts complex SBA forms—such as Forms 1919, 413, and 159—into step-by-step digital applications. It extracts financial data from tax returns, connects to bank accounts, and automates credit checks and financial spreading. A partnership with Tax Guard reported by Yahoo Finance integrates IRS-verified tax transcripts directly into the automated workflow to reduce fraud risk and due diligence overhead. According to PR Newswire, Casca automates over 100 manual steps, performs 40 credit and KYB checks, and helps banks cut loan processing times to between one and four days while increasing lead conversion rates by 312%.

Founded by Stanford Alumni

Casca was founded in 2023 by CEO Lukas Haffer and CTO Isaiah Williams. Lukas Haffer previously served as Chief of Staff for the European market at Avaloq, a core banking software provider managing over $4 trillion in assets, before earning an MBA at Stanford University as an Arjay-Miller Scholar. Isaiah Williams earned a B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University and worked as a Senior Machine Learning Platform Engineer at conversational AI startup Elise AI.

In an interview on The Art of SBA Lending, Haffer noted that while studying machine learning at Stanford, he recognized a divide between AI researchers who lacked banking domain knowledge and legacy software vendors constrained by 30-year-old mainframe systems.

Bank Partnerships and Awards

Casca's software is deployed at major U.S. commercial lenders. Celtic Bank selected the company to power its nationwide SBA 7(a) lending program, executing software deployment in weeks rather than traditional year-long enterprise implementation cycles, according to PR Newswire. Other key financial institution clients include Live Oak Bank, the top SBA 7(a) lender by dollar volume, and Huntington National Bank, the largest SBA lender by loan count.

Industry recognitions include winning the Tearsheet AI Product of the Year Award and being named a Banking and Financial Services Winner in the 2026 BIG Innovation Awards, as detailed by PR Newswire.

Hiring at Casca

To support product expansion across commercial lending categories, Casca is hiring for several San Francisco-based roles across engineering, operations, security, and recruitment.

On the technical side, the company is recruiting a Forward Deployed Engineer to partner directly with bank clients, translate commercial requirements into technical architectures, and write production code with project ownership. To mature its software development practices, Casca is hiring a Head of Security & Compliance to build internal security tools, lead application security teams, and manage compliance certifications including SOC 2 and ISO 27001.

To scale team operations, Casca is bringing on a Director of Customer Support to design customer support processes and build AI-native automated workflows. The company is also hiring a Technical Recruiter as its first technical talent hire to construct a hiring engine alongside the founders. Open inquiries can also be submitted through the Don't See the Perfect Fit? application.

See all open roles at Casca