In 2017, Saket Kumar joined La Famiglia (now part of General Catalyst’s team in Europe). He later founded and ran Vitt, a B2B cash management platform, through four years of COVID-era headwinds. Now he's building Prime Meridian alongside Rishabh Jain, one of 100 elite ML engineers at xAI who worked on Grok before diving deep to solve a problem that touches every American household: annual tax filings.

Saket brings strategic instinct and customer obsession honed through years of building fintech products. Rishabh taught himself the U.S. tax code from scratch and built a backend system that scored 100% on TaxCalcBench, the gold standard benchmark. 

A mutual friend introduced them in March 2025. Four months later, they had built the core backend for fully automated tax filing and launched a working frontend, ready for tax season. 

At General Catalyst, relationships are our primary flywheel: once you join our Famiglia, you always belong. We've known Saket for eight years, watched him build through challenges, and understand how he leads. We're proud to be backing Prime Meridian from day one, excited about the opportunity to work with him again and to welcome Rishabh into the Famiglia.

$400 Billion in Refunds, Billions Left Behind

Over 150 million Americans file tax returns annually. $400 billion flows back as refunds. Most people overpay or miss deductions they deserve.

Incumbent platforms use rules-based systems that cannot understand context. Traditional CPAs charge hundreds but routinely overlook credits. Prime Meridian treats the IRS tax code like a codebase, hunting for every deduction human preparers miss. The system often finds $500-$1,000+ in additional refunds per customer, money that was always theirs, now back in their hands.

The goal of Prime Meridian will be to get every American the maximum refund they are eligible for, while reducing the time and money they spend on taxes to zero.

When customers win, Prime Meridian wins.

Building AI-Native Consumer Finance

Tax filing is the wedge into full-stack consumer finance: banking, credit, investments, and insurance, all built AI-native. It's the annual moment when millions of Americans re-engage with their financial lives.

We sat down with Saket and Rishabh to learn more about their vision for the future of AI-native consumer finance. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What insight are you building on that is obvious to you but not to others?

Two things: First, when customers feel genuine anxiety and fear about a problem like tax prep, it's unsolved, regardless of market size or incumbent dominance. The revenue proves people will pay, but widespread dread proves it hasn't actually been fixed. Second, AI is getting exponentially cheaper. That means we can offer what used to be a premium service completely free. That changes everything about how you build a consumer business.

When did you first realize this was the problem you needed to solve?

Talking to a woman in Arkansas. Her anxiety around taxes had nothing to do with complexity or money. It was existential dread. We initially thought she might be an outlier, but the more people we spoke with, the more we realized this fear was universal. That's when we knew the problem was still wide open.

From a technical standpoint, what's novel or fresh about how you're building?

We've built a system that navigates the tax code the way modern coding tools navigate software. Instead of trying to process everything at once, it knows where to look and what's relevant. That lets us handle complex edge cases instantly, the way a seasoned CPA would.

What's your main focus for next year?

Build a painless, premium tax solution for every American, completely free. We want to make tax prep a problem of the past, not just a cheaper version of the same anxiety.