Djentic · Research Researched October 1, 2026 · public sources only

What we learned about Grove.

We spent some time with grove.tax, the a16z speedrun pages and the tax-tech market to understand what Grove is building and why it matters. Here is what we found, with sources for every number.

01 · Timeline

A young company, moving fast.

2025

Grove is founded

Started in San Francisco to build “the AI tax workflow automation for modern firms.”

Jan – Apr 2026

a16z speedrun SR006

A 12-week program in San Francisco; the cohort was selected from 19,000+ applicants, about 0.4%. Demo Day in April.

2026 season

Live with firms

Collect and Deliver in use at small firms across the US, from PCO Bookkeepers to West Harbour Financial Group.

2026

The first tax MCP

Checklist MCP opens in beta, “the first MCP server built for tax practices,” with an open-source plugin on GitHub.

Now

Direct ProConnect import

Clients come straight in from Intuit ProConnect Tax. The extension season is free through October 15.

02 · Founders

Built by people who built the category.

Few teams know professional tax software from as many sides. Between them, the founders have shipped the client portal, the prep engines, and consumer-scale infrastructure.

UN

Uday Nandam

Co-founder & CEO
IBM WatsonIntuit LinkLacerte & ProConnect TaxUltraTax CSGrove

12+ years in professional tax software. Part of the founding team at IBM Watson, co-founder of Intuit Link (the client portal for Lacerte, ProSeries and ProConnect), product leader for Lacerte and ProConnect Tax at Intuit, then Head of Product for UltraTax CS at Thomson Reuters, where he directed AI strategy.

“…now developing Grove to disrupt what I helped create.”

GM

Gaurav Mathur

Co-founder & CTO
IndeedAirbnbCloudKitchensGrove

An early engineer at Indeed, followed by engineering leadership at Airbnb and CloudKitchens. At Grove he owns making the AI fast, reliable and secure enough for tax season, when every hour counts.

Consumer-scale engineering, applied to the busiest four months in professional services.

Grove is a small founding team, with alumni of Airbnb, Indeed, Google, IBM, Intuit and Thomson Reuters, and it is hiring a founding engineer, a product designer and go-to-market.

03 · Product

Six steps, one system.

Grove replaces the organizer, the portal, the e-sign tool and the PDF pile with one workflow, from last year's return to this year's walkthrough. It sits alongside the firm's tax software rather than replacing it.

01Live

Prior-Year Brief

Reads last year's return and pulls income sources, deductions and dependents into one view you can scan in 30 seconds.

02Live

Document Checklist

A per-client checklist built from the prior-year return, with magic-link invites and mobile photo capture.

03Live

AI Questionnaire

An adaptive conversation that replaces the 40-page organizer. Grove reports 3× the completion rate.

04Live

Smart Workpapers

Every document renamed, categorized, deduplicated and stitched in return order, with tick marks.

05Coming soon

Prepare & Review

Returns drafted from the workpapers with year-over-year anomaly checks, exported to ProConnect, Lacerte, UltraTax CS or Drake.

06Live

Walkthrough Delivery

A branded tax picture and personalized video summary, with e-sign, payment and seven years of document access.

MCP-first

Grove calls it “the first MCP server built for tax practices.” Firms connect it to the AI tools they already use and query their own client data directly.

  • Checklist MCP live in beta: upload Lacerte or Drake backups, query checklists across the client list
  • Workpapers, Questionnaire and Delivery MCPs announced
  • Works with Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor and Codex CLI; firm-scoped access

Pricing

Pure per-return pricing, designed so a solo preparer can start without a sales call.

  • First 25 returns free, every season
  • The whole 2026 extension season free, through October 15
  • No seats, platform, storage, e-sign or portal fees; $0 off-season
  • No contracts; per-return quote beyond 25 within a business day
Grove reports
70%less time per return
3×more returns per team
95%client satisfaction
04 · The ProConnect launch

From ProConnect to Grove in one click.

Grove's newest launch is a direct import from Intuit ProConnect Tax, which Grove describes as available exclusively on Grove: where other tools start from a backup file, a firm connects its ProConnect account once and its clients arrive ready to work.

It covers individual 1040 clients today, with business returns and AI return prep built for ProConnect filing on the way. Grove credits it to “the team that led product for Lacerte and ProConnect Tax at Intuit.”

“Exclusively on Grove. No exports and no files to email.”

1

Connect once

Link the firm's ProConnect account from Grove's integrations page. No exports.

2

Pick your 1040 clients

Choose who to bring over; each one becomes a return in Grove.

3

Prior year comes with them

Contacts, filing status, spouse and dependents, income sources and payers, K-1s, deductions, credits and carryovers.

4

The season starts itself

A prior-year brief, document checklist and questionnaire are created automatically for every client.

05 · The market

A big profession with a capacity problem.

More returns, fewer new preparers. That gap is what Grove's “3× more returns with the same team” is aimed at.

886k

Current PTIN holders

Paid preparers registered with the IRS as of September 2026, up from about 808k in February.

IRS Return Preparer Office
195k

CPAs with a PTIN

Plus about 65k enrolled agents and 23k attorneys: the credentialed core of the profession.

IRS Return Preparer Office, 2026
$621M

Intuit ProTax revenue

Lacerte, ProSeries and ProConnect in fiscal 2025, up 4%. A measure of what firms spend on prep software alone.

Intuit FY2025 results
−6.6%

Accounting graduates

Bachelor's and master's graduates fell in 2023–24, though spring 2025 enrollment rose 12.4%.

AICPA via CFO Dive
30.5%

CPAs nearing retirement

The average share of their CPAs that firms expect to retire within three years.

AICPA survey via CPA Practice Advisor
06 · Landscape

Where Grove fits, layer by layer.

Tax tech is busy right now. Most tools own one layer inside one vendor's world; Grove's bet is a workflow that crosses layers and works with every major prep engine.

LayerEstablished toolsNewer entrantsGrove's angle
IntakeIntuit Link, TaxDome, Canopy, SmartVaultSoraban, StanfordTax, TrussA conversational questionnaire and a checklist built from last year's return, with clients imported directly from ProConnect.
PrepUltraTax with SurePrep, ProConnect AI features, CCH Axcess AI ScanBlack Ore, Juno, Filed, TaxGPTDrafts that export into the firm's existing software (ProConnect, Lacerte, UltraTax CS or Drake), so nobody has to switch engines.
DeliveryIntuit Link, SmartVault, TaxDome portalsAiwynThe walkthrough: a branded tax picture, a personalized video, then e-sign and payment in one place.
AdvisoryProConnect Tax Advisor, CoCounselBlue JA founder-led AI Advisory engagement that helps firms map their workflow and plan their AI roadmap.
Practice mgmtKarbon, TaxDome, Canopy, Intuit Accountant SuiteBasis, ModusGrove already holds every client's stage across six steps, a natural foundation for firm-wide views.

Tools named by layer for orientation only; many span more than one.

07 · Where the next bets could be

What we'd love to see next.

Ideas from outside the building, each growing out of something Grove already does well. We built three of them as concepts to show what an hour of agent time can do.

01 · Firm-level visibility

The season, on one screen

Grove knows each client's step. Rolled up, that becomes the busy-season board an owner checks first: what's stuck, who to chase, who's overloaded.

Season Command Center
02 · Advisory at delivery

Advice in every walkthrough

The walkthrough is the one meeting every client attends. Surfacing S-corp, retirement and safe-harbor opportunities there turns a return into a relationship.

Advisory Radar
03 · MCP as distribution

The tax tool agents reach for

With Workpapers, Questionnaire and Delivery joining Checklist, Grove becomes the system of record that every AI assistant in the firm can talk to.

Grove Agent Console
04 · Business returns

1120-S and 1065

Grove has already signaled business returns for the ProConnect import. As firms grow past solo, entity returns are where they spend the most time.

grove.tax/proconnect
08 · Sources

Where this came from.

Everything here is from public pages, read on October 1, 2026. Product statuses follow grove.tax on that date.

Built by Djentic agents in about an hour. A small team of AI agents read the public record, cross-checked the numbers and assembled this page. If we got something wrong, we'd be glad to be corrected.