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Anrok automates sales tax and VAT calculation, registration, and filing across every jurisdiction a cloud company sells into.
ENTRY ANGLES
Turnkey international sales operations for consumer brands · AI-powered regulatory compliance navigation for exporters · Local entity setup and multi-country operations infrastructure
VERTICALS
CAPABILITIES
Regulatory knowledge across multiple jurisdictions, International market entry and localization, Multi-country compliance and entity management
Selling software globally used to mean collecting one check and worrying about taxes later. Then regulators caught up. Anrok exists to handle the resulting chaos – automating tax calculation, registration, and filing across every jurisdiction a cloud company sells into.
The two most consequential tax categories are consumption taxes (sales tax and VAT) and payroll taxes on locally employed staff. While not every SaaS company has headcount in every country, an increasing number of governments – and even individual US states – have started taxing digital product sales to their residents. The rules differ everywhere, and they keep changing.
Non-compliance with local tax law on digital sales costs cloud companies an average of 4.3% of revenue. That's a real number.
Anrok automates the entire workflow. Companies start by uploading their product catalog, transaction history, and employee locations, then assign tax codes by selecting from drop-down menus. The platform cross-references sales geography, headcount, transaction volumes, and payroll data to produce a map of jurisdictions where the company has a compliance obligation.
When local regulations change, Anrok notifies the company that a new tax registration is now required. One button press submits the registration application – US state registrations are free; international registrations carry an additional fee.
From there, checkout forms automatically display the appropriate tax fields for each buyer's jurisdiction, calculate the correct amount, and collect it. All the resulting data flows directly to the relevant tax authorities – as filings, VAT returns, or whatever documentation the jurisdiction requires. In the US, Anrok handles filings directly; internationally, it works through local partners.
Founded in 2020, Anrok has grown steadily. Last year the platform processed $7 billion in client revenue. Funding has matched the trajectory: $4.3M in summer 2021, $20M in spring 2022, and now another $30M at a $250M valuation.
Anrok's market is only about five years old. The regulatory tightening that made it necessary – new jurisdictions starting to tax digital sales – is a recent phenomenon, not a structural constant.
This is a good reminder that successful startups usually ride a wave that's breaking right now – a regulatory shift, a market structural change, a technology unlock, or a behavioral shift. Everything that could have been built before has already been built. If a solution doesn't exist yet, either someone tried and it didn't work – or the conditions for it simply weren't there yet. Both situations can reverse quickly.
The second insight is equally consequential: software companies are global from day one – or at least, they can be. When they're not, it usually comes down to one of two things: the product isn't good enough to compete globally, or the founders lack the ambition to try. In either case, a global competitor will eventually show up and squeeze out the local one, because the global player accumulates more resources to improve its product.
Globalization has become a mainstream business trend. A 2022 essay from a16z made the case that companies of the future should be "global by default." Historically, startups expanded slowly – first dominating a home market, then adding one country at a time over years. Today, there's no structural reason that can't happen in parallel from the start.
Except for a handful of technical complications – including tax compliance in every jurisdiction the company sells into. Which is exactly what Anrok solves.
The pandemic arguably catalyzed all of this. Lockdowns scattered people into their homes, but simultaneously demonstrated that global business – negotiations, deals, remote teams across time zones – could happen entirely online. The technology had been available for years; what was missing was the collective permission to just do it.
Anrok's rise is a direct product of two converging trends: the spread of digital sales taxation and the sudden appetite of software companies to build global from the start.
Every startup should seriously consider defaulting to a global posture from day one. That means building products competitive at a global level, treating the home market as one market among many rather than the whole game, and moving faster on international expansion rather than deferring it indefinitely.
There's also a growing market in helping other startups become global by default.
Anrok is one version. Here are several others.
OpenBorder ([related review](/review/pljus-35-vyruchki-za-150-minut)) offers local consumer brands a turnkey international sales operation – brands can be live in new markets within days and, according to OpenBorder, increase total revenue by 30–40% within six months. The startup has raised $10M.
Worldover ([related review](/review/vsego-20-klientov-no-milliony-investicij)) built a platform that helps cosmetics manufacturers navigate medical compliance requirements in the countries they export to. An AI engine crawls regulatory agency websites across jurisdictions, maintains an up-to-date knowledge base, and helps companies prepare applications and obtain the right certifications. Worldover has raised £3M.
Onex ([related review](/review/lokalnye-posredniki-jeto-globalnye-dengi)) connects medical product manufacturers with distributors in international markets, raising $1.2M.
Centuro Global ([related review](/review/shans-dlja-malenkih-i-ambicioznyh)) helps companies set up local entities and operate in 170 countries, having raised £3.3M.
The question worth sitting with: will you build your own startup to be global by default – or build the infrastructure that helps others get there?