Duqu raises €1.5M pre-seed to unlock cash stuck in unpaid invoices

Amsterdam fintech Duqu has raised a €1.5M pre-seed led by Curiosity VC, with No Such Ventures participating, to advance businesses cash against their unpaid B2B invoices, announced on 24 September 2026.

Getting paid is still the slowest thing a European business does. We can incorporate a company in a day and open a bank account in an hour, yet 47% of B2B invoices in Western Europe sit overdue (Atradius Payment Practices Barometer, May 2025). The counterweight is that this gap is exactly where a new generation of Dutch fintechs is building. Below, I lay out the round, how the product works, and why the underwriting engine behind it is the part worth watching.

Two Amsterdam funds back an eleven-month-old company

Duqu raised €1.5M in pre-seed funding, announced on 24 September 2026. Curiosity VC, the Amsterdam-based early-stage fund focused on AI software, led the round; No Such Ventures, the Amsterdam investor that backs companies deal by deal, participated. It is the company’s first external capital.

Founded in October 2025 by Maas de Goede, Victor Brouwer and Diederik Nassenstein, Duqu says it has reached roughly 1,500 active users, processed €4.6M in financing applications and advanced more than €1.2M since launch (company figures at announcement). The new money goes to scaling both sides of the business: the working capital platform itself and the AI underwriting engine that runs it.

“Businesses can arrange almost everything instantly today, yet after completing the work they can still wait weeks to get paid,” said co-founder Maas de Goede in the announcement. That is the whole pitch in one sentence.

Advances, not factoring

The product is deliberately simpler than the industry it enters. A business submits an outstanding B2B invoice; Duqu assesses it and advances the money within 24 hours, often within the hour. The invoice is not sold – the business keeps ownership of it and of the customer relationship, which is the blocker that keeps many SMEs away from classic factoring. There are no minimum or maximum amounts, and fees apply only when an advance is actually used.

The economics rest on the underwriting engine, which Duqu says automates around 95% of the credit assessment. Herman Kienhuis of Curiosity VC put his finger on why that matters: small financing applications are relatively expensive for traditional lenders to process, so the smallest businesses are precisely the ones incumbents cannot serve profitably. Automate the assessment and the maths flips.

Brussels has had a Late Payment Directive on the books since 2011. The queue at the till has barely moved – which tells you this is a workflow problem, not a legislative one.

A $4.68 trillion market that clears at paper speed

So why does a €1.5M cheque matter in a market measured in trillions? The global factoring market is worth USD 4.68 trillion in 2026 and is forecast to reach USD 6.30 trillion by 2031, a 6.12% CAGR (Mordor Intelligence, May 2026). Europe is its heartland: our continent held 58.56% of that market in 2025, per the same report. Duqu is not taking share from bank-owned factors at pre-seed; it is testing whether automated underwriting can serve the ticket sizes those factors ignore.

The good news is it has company. In the same week, our records logged Benford’s €5M pre-seed to run tech-native audits and mika’s €6M seed to automate accounting for German SMEs. Three rounds, one pattern: the unglamorous back office of European small business is getting rebuilt, line by line – and Benelux and German investors are paying for it. The full picture is in our fundraising data.

The engine is the business

The detail that lifts this round above its size: the underwriting engine is modular and offered white label, so banks, lenders and leasing companies can run Duqu’s credit assessment under their own brand. Thijn van Helvoirt of No Such Ventures sees the same technology applying across leasing, mortgages and buy-now-pay-later – three markets, one engine.

That makes Duqu two companies in one: a working capital platform with 1,500 users, and an infrastructure play whose customers would be the very incumbents the platform competes with. Pre-seed is exactly the stage to keep both doors open. What we are watching over the next year is which door the revenue walks through – advances drawn on the platform, or licensing deals signed with the banks.

The goal was never another loan book in Amsterdam. It is invoices that clear at the speed of the work they bill for. The opportunity is clear – watch who plugs the engine in first.