Enzai Raises $4M to Accelerate Safe and Trustworthy AI
BELFAST, Northern Ireland, Sept. 7, 2023 -- Enzai, a Belfast-based startup providing AI governance software, has raised a $4 million seed funding round led by Berlin-based Cavalry Ventures. Enzai will use the funding to double-down on their market leading AI governance solution, which helps organizations understand and manage the risks that come with AI while meeting their regulatory obligations.
"We founded Enzai with a clear vision: to empower organizations to harness the incredible potential of AI, while minimizing the risks involved," said Ryan Donnelly, co-founder of Enzai. "As AI continues to evolve and permeate every industry, ensuring that it is built and adopted in a responsible, compliant manner has never been more critical. This financing fuels our commitment to enable businesses to innovate in AI with confidence, whilst safeguarding against potential pitfalls, and it paves the way for a future where AI drives both progress and responsibility."
The Growing Integration of AI and Expanding Regulation Increase Demand for Solutions
As organizations increasingly integrate AI into their operations, they encounter a multitude of challenges around understanding, managing and complying with AI-related risks and regulations. The exponential growth of AI capabilities often outpaces the development of clear regulatory frameworks, leading to uncertainties in areas such as data privacy, bias mitigation, accountability and transparency. Recent regulatory developments require businesses to adhere to stringent AI development and deployment guidelines. Each regulatory regime takes a different approach. This quickly becomes hard for organizations to manage, which further highlights the pressing need for robust AI governance.
Enzai’s AI governance software platform comes at a pivotal moment, providing organizations with a comprehensive toolkit to navigate these complexities, ensuring the responsible development, deployment and usage of AI. Formed in 2021 by Ryan Donnelly, a leading lawyer in the AI regulation space, and Jack Carlisle, a software engineer with extensive startup experience, the team at Enzai have a truly unique combination of legal, engineering and data science expertise to build a solution in this area. They are tracking the regulatory developments around the world in this area and responding quickly with new frameworks and features to ensure their customers can stay one step ahead.
"By centralizing AI governance within a platform, organizations can harness the power of technology to navigate intricate regulatory requirements, adapt swiftly to changes, and ultimately foster a culture of responsible and accountable AI usage. This approach not only minimizes potential legal and reputational pitfalls but also increases the benefits of AI-driven innovation in a controlled and sustainable manner,” said Claude Ritter, managing partner at Cavalry Ventures.
The platform allows organizations to build up an inventory of their AI, apply policies and procedures to that AI, and then measure compliance in real time. The company are also today announcing a new feature on the platform called “Controls,” which introduces an entirely new paradigm for building and using AI to keep it all in check. Controls allow cross-functional teams to collaborate and conduct assessments of AI systems in ways that just aren't possible using other tools.
Trust becomes a critical currency for the success of AI technologies According to Accenture's 2022 Tech Vision study, a mere 35% of consumers worldwide express confidence in the current implementation of AI by organizations, while an overwhelming 77% believe that organizations should bear responsibility for any misapplication of AI technology.
"We are all dealing with this incredibly powerful new technology in the form of AI," said Tom Wilson, partner at Seedcamp. "At the current rate of development, it is critical that we find ways to harness this development so that it has a positive impact on the world. We’re thrilled to support Enzai as one of the first investments from our new Fund VI. The team behind Enzai have identified a really strong way of managing AI risk, and their tech is set to be a foundational part of the AI ecosystem."
Enzai plan to use the new funds to build out their engineering capabilities and support their route-to-market efforts.
About Enzai
Enzai was formed in 2021 by a team of leading lawyers and engineers concerned about the risks that computational models could pose to society at large. With expert lawyers in their team, they know that governance is a vital tool in understanding and managing risk. Based out of the Ormeau Baths in Belfast, Northern Ireland, their mission is to ensure that powerful AI technologies can gain the level of trust necessary to fulfill their true potential.
Source: Enzai
