London based governance, risk and compliance startup HelmGuard has raised $7.3 million in seed funding to expand its AI powered platform for automating risk and compliance assessments.
The round was co led by Infinity Ventures and Frontline, with participation from FinTech Collective, Stage 2 Capital and Entrepreneurs First. The new capital will support HelmGuard’s expansion in the United States, including establishing a presence in New York and San Francisco, while also funding additional engineering and commercial hires.
Founded by former Palantir executive John Daley and Jack Miller, HelmGuard is developing technology designed to reduce the manual work involved in assessing corporate risk and compliance.
Replacing Manual Assessments
Risk and compliance teams traditionally depend on questionnaires, spreadsheets, documents and periodic reviews to assess whether organisations and their suppliers meet required security and regulatory standards.
That approach becomes increasingly difficult as companies work with larger numbers of third party vendors, operate across multiple jurisdictions and introduce AI systems into business critical workflows.
HelmGuard’s platform is designed to go directly to the source of risk information. Rather than asking teams to repeatedly collect evidence and complete questionnaires, its AI agents can access relevant company systems and analyse information to identify risks and evaluate controls.
Building a Risk Intelligence Layer
The company’s platform connects information from corporate documents and underlying business systems into an interconnected data layer covering risk, security and compliance.
Specialised AI agents can then use this information to automate workflows such as third party risk management, control gap assessments and security reviews.
HelmGuard says the platform is designed to provide evidence and reasoning alongside its assessments. Citations and reasoning traces allow teams to understand where conclusions originated and support human review, internal reporting and interactions with auditors and regulators.
The company believes this approach can significantly reduce the time risk teams spend collecting information and checking evidence manually.
AI Agent Assurance
HelmGuard is also developing technology aimed at a newer governance challenge, AI agents themselves.
As businesses increasingly deploy autonomous AI systems that can access tools, data and other software, their behaviour and risk profiles can change as models are updated or new capabilities are introduced.
Traditional compliance certifications conducted periodically may therefore provide only a snapshot of an AI system’s behaviour rather than its current operating state.
HelmGuard is developing an agent assurance layer designed to assess AI agent behaviour at runtime. The system is intended to help organisations understand whether AI agents are operating within defined controls and identify emerging risks as their behaviour changes.
A Continuous Approach to Compliance
Another part of HelmGuard’s strategy is its Verified Risk Network, which aims to allow organisations to exchange verified risk information continuously.
Instead of treating a compliance document as the primary unit of assurance, the company wants to create a system where individual risk claims can be assessed and verified by AI agents and then shared between organisations.
This could eventually reduce repetitive assessments across business relationships, particularly where companies repeatedly need to prove their security and compliance posture to customers, partners and regulators.
Targeting Regulated Industries
HelmGuard is initially focused on industries where compliance and security requirements are particularly demanding, including financial services, insurance, healthcare and industrial businesses.
These sectors manage large volumes of sensitive information and often rely on extensive networks of third party providers, making continuous risk monitoring increasingly important.
Expanding Across the US
The latest funding will support HelmGuard’s international expansion, with the company establishing operations in New York and San Francisco in addition to its London headquarters.
The startup will also invest in expanding its engineering and commercial teams while continuing development of its AI agent assurance technology.
HelmGuard is positioning its platform around a broader shift in enterprise risk management, from periodic documentation toward continuous, evidence based assessment. As organisations deploy more AI agents and manage increasingly complex technology environments, the company believes automated systems capable of gathering evidence, assessing risks and explaining their conclusions could become an important part of modern governance and compliance.