As artificial intelligence becomes deeply embedded into business operations, many companies are discovering that deploying AI systems is only the beginning of the challenge. Monitoring how those systems behave in real world environments, preventing harmful outputs, and ensuring compliance at scale have emerged as critical concerns for enterprises worldwide. Against this backdrop, AI governance startup White Circle has secured $11 million in seed funding to build infrastructure designed to help organisations manage and secure AI systems in real time.
The funding round attracted a powerful group of investors and AI industry leaders, including Romain Huet, Dirk Kingma, Guillaume Lample, Thomas Wolf, Olivier Pomel, François Chollet, Mehdi Ghissassi, Paige Bailey, and David Cramer.
Building Safety Infrastructure for AI
White Circle was created to address a growing problem facing enterprises as AI adoption accelerates across industries. The rise of low barrier AI development and what many in the industry describe as “vibe coding” has made it easier than ever for businesses to launch AI powered products quickly. However, many organisations still lack proper oversight tools to understand how those systems behave after deployment.
The company has developed a platform that enables businesses to test, monitor, protect, and optimise AI systems through a unified API. Its proprietary AI models continuously analyse inputs and outputs in real time to identify risks such as hallucinations, harmful content, prompt injection attacks, malicious users, and model drift.
By centralising AI governance functions into a single platform, White Circle aims to provide organisations with better visibility into system behaviour while helping teams maintain reliability, compliance, and safety standards as AI usage expands.
Monitoring AI in Real Time
White Circle’s platform is designed to identify issues before they escalate into larger operational or reputational risks. The system can detect situations where AI models may unintentionally leak sensitive information, generate unsafe responses, or become vulnerable to manipulation attempts aimed at forcing harmful actions from AI agents.
The platform also allows organisations to create customised governance policies tailored to their own operational and regulatory requirements. Teams can automate enforcement measures such as limiting suspicious activity, restricting abusive users, or blocking harmful interactions in real time.
Another key component of the platform is its analytics and feedback system, which enables businesses to track performance trends and improve models over time. By using labelled user feedback, White Circle continuously refines its monitoring capabilities while helping organisations better understand how their AI systems evolve after deployment.
Responding to the Governance Gap
Denis Shilov said the rapid pace of AI innovation is advancing faster than existing governance frameworks can handle. According to him, AI systems are increasingly being used in areas that directly affect people’s lives, including healthcare, finance, hiring, and security, making oversight more important than ever.
Shilov explained that the company’s goal is to provide organisations with a unified system that allows them to monitor AI behaviour, respond to risks quickly, and improve reliability and compliance across their operations.
Elena Iumagulova added that the platform was built to make AI oversight accessible not only for engineers and technical teams but also for non technical decision makers. She said the company focused on creating a centralised interface that simplifies monitoring, optimisation, and governance regardless of the size or complexity of deployment.
Expansion Plans Ahead
With the new funding, White Circle plans to accelerate product development and expand its team across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe. The company will also focus on supporting the continued growth of its global customer base as enterprises increasingly seek tools that can help them manage the operational and regulatory risks associated with large scale AI deployment.
As businesses continue integrating AI into mission critical workflows, White Circle is positioning itself as part of a new generation of companies building the infrastructure needed to make enterprise AI safer, more transparent, and more accountable.