Diligent AI £1.9m seed backs AI agents to automate KYC and AML
This article covers Diligent AI, a regtech startup, which has raised £1.9m ($2.5m) in a seed funding round to expand its use of AI agents that automate KYC and anti-money-laundering workflows. The funding aims to support compliance teams at banks, payment firms and fintechs by reducing repetitive data-gathering tasks and speeding investigations.
Diligent AI, a regtech startup, has raised £1.9m ($2.5m) in a seed funding round to expand its use of AI agents that automate KYC and anti-money-laundering workflows, aiming to cut repetitive tasks for compliance teams and speed investigations.
Why it matters
Compliance teams are under growing strain from faster digital payments, rising sanctions regimes and a surge in fraud. Those pressures force experienced analysts into repetitive data-gathering work, reducing time available for judgement-led investigations. Automating routine KYC and AML tasks could free human analysts to focus on complex risk decisions, improving both speed and auditability in the financial system.
Inside the product
Diligent AI builds autonomous agents that attempt end-to-end KYC and AML workflows: onboarding merchant and SMB clients, adverse media screening, sanctions alert remediation and other routine risk reviews. The company says its agents “read, reason and investigate,” handling repetitive steps so compliance teams can concentrate on higher-value assessment.
Deployments already span publicly listed payment firms, banks and global fintechs across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Japan. Clients named include Flywire (NASDAQ: FLYW), Allica Bank, Teya and Digital Garage (TYO: 4819) — organisations operating in payments, banking and fintech markets that face volume-driven compliance workloads.
In the announcement, Maureen Gorman, Head of Global Operations at Alma, said:
Diligent AI significantly reduced our onboarding workflows and eliminated repetitive tasks for our team, supporting the quality of our processes by making them consistent and auditable.
In the announcement, Karan Khanna, Fraud Strategy Manager at Tamara, said:
Diligent AI agents helped us slash our risk review times significantly, but more importantly, helped us build a stronger and more systematic approach to risk detection.
Who are the investors?
The round was led by Speedinvest and Shapers, with continued participation from Y Combinator and a group of angel backers. Angels include founders and CEOs from incumbents and notable fintechs such as Allica Bank, N26, CyberSource (Visa), IDnow and Billie.
Speedinvest is a large European venture firm with more than €1 billion in assets under management and a sector-focused approach; its portfolio includes Bitpanda, GoStudent, Wayflyer and Tide. The presence of veteran financial-services founders and executives among the angels suggests investors are backing the team for domain expertise in regulated environments and product-market fit within compliance operations.
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Founder perspective
Diligent AI frames the funding as fuel for product expansion and hiring. The company plans to build additional AI agents for more task archetypes, strengthen its existing suite and grow its go-to-market team to support customers globally. It is recruiting across engineering, machine learning and sales roles to scale delivery and integrations.
The bigger picture
This deal sits at the intersection of two trends: rising regulatory and fraud pressures that raise demand for automated compliance tools, and investor appetite for applied AI in financial services. For regtech investors, systems that can produce consistent, auditable outputs while reducing manual workloads are increasingly attractive as banks and payment firms face heavier oversight.
The seed round also underlines continued transatlantic interest in UK-founded compliance tech, with both European venture capital and US accelerators represented. As regulatory regimes evolve across the UK and Europe, vendors that can combine domain expertise with robust, explainable AI will be central to how firms manage financial crime risk.
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