Karavel raises £1.25m pre-seed to centralise compliance workflows with AI
This article covers Karavel, an AI startup that has raised £1.25m in a pre-seed funding round led by Fuel Ventures to build an AI-driven platform that centralises regulatory monitoring and compliance workflows for highly regulated industries. The funding aims to speed up review processes for teams in financial services, insurance, healthcare and other regulated sectors by reducing manual work and accelerating decision making.
Karavel, an AI startup, has raised £1.25m in a pre-seed funding round led by Fuel Ventures to build an AI-driven platform that centralises regulatory monitoring and compliance workflows for highly regulated industries. The funding aims to speed up review processes for teams in financial services, insurance, healthcare and other regulated sectors where regulatory change and enforcement pressure are increasing.
Why it matters
Compliance teams are under growing pressure as regulatory frameworks expand and enforcement activity rises. Many organisations still rely on fragmented, manual processes to track rule changes and approve marketing or promotional materials, creating bottlenecks and reliance on costly external legal support. A tool that reduces manual work and accelerates decision making can cut operating costs and lower the risk of non-compliance across entire businesses.
Inside the product
Karavel offers a unified platform that combines automated ad reviews, real-time horizon scanning, regulatory gap analysis and prescriptive guidance in a single interface. Its AI is designed to analyse regulatory updates as they occur, highlight relevant changes, extract actionable requirements and suggest next steps for legal, compliance and marketing teams.
The company says its AdCheck functionality completes financial promotion reviews three times faster while reaching a 91% first-pass approval rate. Its horizon scanning replaces bi-weekly manual reporting with daily automated alerts, claimed to deliver efficiency gains of up to 14 times and reduce external legal spend by as much as 73% in the first year.
Founders Pedro Sousa and Nav Garcha built the product from experience working in compliance and engineering roles at firms including Revolut, Deliveroo, CNN and Clearscore. Karavel targets the operational workflow that sits between regulatory change and business execution.
Who are the investors?
The round was led by Fuel Ventures, a UK venture capital firm. The capital will be used to accelerate product development and expand the team as Karavel targets organisations operating under increasing regulatory scrutiny.
In the announcement, Mark Pearson, Founder of Fuel Ventures, said:
Karavel is solving one of the most urgent operational challenges facing regulated industries today. The team has combined deep compliance expertise with advanced AI to create a platform that redefines how organisations interpret regulations, review content and coordinate cross-team efforts. Their approach replaces outdated workflows with intelligent systems that deliver real commercial impact, and we’re proud to back their vision as they scale.
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Founder perspective
In the announcement, Pedro Sousa, Co-founder & CEO at Karavel, said:
During my time as Head of Compliance, I had to face many of the obstacles that are still present for most compliance officers: manual and repetitive work, fragmented processes, friction with other teams and that ever-present feeling in the pit of my stomach that I was missing something important. That’s why we built Karavel, to give compliance, legal and marketing teams the clarity, automation and tools that I always wished I’d had in previous roles.
The quote underlines the product’s origins in day-to-day compliance pain points rather than purely technical innovation.
The bigger picture
The raise highlights investor interest in tools that help regulated businesses manage growing compliance burdens, and the role AI can play in operationalising regulation at scale. For UK and European firms facing frequent rule changes and higher fines for breaches, workflow automation that reduces dependence on external counsel can be an attractive economic proposition.
Karavel’s funding comes as part of a broader trend: investors are increasingly backing startups that apply AI to business processes rather than consumer-facing products. For the UK and Europe, solutions that help firms navigate regulatory complexity could see steady demand as policymakers tighten standards and enforcement.
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