Calvin Risk, a Swiss startup that helps companies create and manage trustworthy AI aligned with humanity, has raised $4 million in seed funding. The investment round was led by Join Capital and seed + speed Ventures (which invested in Kertos), bringing the total funding to more than $5 million.
What are its future plans?
This funding will accelerate Calvin Risk’s product development, enabling it to scale its platform, enhance its AI risk assessment tools, and expand its market reach across Europe. The company plans to expand its platform’s capabilities to support the business and analytics team while ensuring that proper control and oversight are implemented, accessible, and easy to understand for control functions and management.
Specialises in adaptive assessments
Many AI algorithms being developed today face significant challenges in becoming commercially viable. Transitioning lab-created models to real-world AI-enabled products is difficult due to inherent risks in development and deployment. Many AI algorithms function as “black boxes” and rely on vast, potentially biased datasets, leading to flawed outputs. Developers must prevent discriminatory biases and ensure algorithms perform reliably outside controlled environments. This underscores the need for robust evaluation metrics, context-specific assessments, and ongoing monitoring to ensure AI operates as intended.
Despite this, many organisations still rely on post-incident analysis or lack structured frameworks to address the safety of their AI. Calvin Risk, born out of ETH Zurich, is bridging that gap with a platform that uses adaptive assessments and continuous monitoring to provide a real-time overview of a company’s entire AI portfolio, predicting potential risks and their associated value-at-risk.
New benchmark for responsible AI adoption
Founded by Julian Riebartsch and Syang Zhou in 2022, Calvin Risk combines deep academic expertise with practical industry experience. The company’s product provides a modular framework for proactive AI governance with two core capabilities: governance digitisation for internal directives and risk evaluations, and automated AI testing between development and deployment.
Unlike traditional platforms focused solely on documentation or post-deployment fixes, the Swiss startup offers real-time insights through preventive, pre-deployment assessments, setting a new standard for responsible AI adoption. Its executive-friendly interface translates complex technical evaluations into clear, actionable insights, crucial for customer-facing AI, where transparency and reliability are paramount.
The Calvin Risk platform called Calvin is a risk management system centred around a company’s AI inventory. Companies can quantify the technical, ethical, and regulatory risks of their AI portfolio by completing the platform’s adaptive assessment tasks at each stage in an algorithm’s lifecycle. The result provides an overview and insights into the change in risk levels over time and other important factors, both at the level of individual algorithms and at the portfolio level. The platform also calculates the probability of an adverse incident happening as well as the potential costs of those risks.
Key partnerships
In the past year, Calvin Risk achieved milestones in product development, customer adoption, and revenue growth. Already, it has secured partnerships with leading global institutions, including Aviva, one of the world’s largest insurers. Aviva uses advanced risk assessment tools from Calvin Risk to ensure the robustness and fairness of its AI systems in customer-facing operations to market.
The company has joined HITS Innovation Garage, a premier innovation hub powered by Generali. This partnership places Calvin Risk in close proximity to Generali’s diverse business units, creating valuable opportunities to explore and develop real-world use cases for Calvin Risk’s AI governance solutions.
Another milestone is its collaboration with Lufthansa Industry Solutions, resulting in the first GenAI model to earn an “Assessment Seal Certification” from certification company TÜV Süd. This certification, pivotal as industries anticipate the EU AI Act, reflects Calvin Risk’s capacity to guarantee AI models meet rigorous technical and ethical benchmarks.
Other partners include Lloyds Banking Group, the Audit Research Center (ARC Institute) for third-line defence solutions, and others demonstrating strong market validation across multiple sectors.
“With AI systems becoming central to operations, proper corporate governance must now include explicit AI risk management at the Board level,” commented Julian Riebartsch, CEO and Founder of Calvin Risk. “Through our governance and risk management platform, we provide businesses with deep insights into their AI inventory, enabling them to analyse technical, ethical, and regulatory risks qualitatively and quantitatively.”
“As an investor, I see enormous potential in Calvin Risk to help shape the emerging market for AI risk management. The combination of technological excellence from academia and in-depth industry expertise makes this startup a real help for all those companies that use and build relevant AI-based business processes,” said Alexander Kölpin, Investor and Managing Partner at seed + speed Ventures.
“We are thrilled to be the lead investor in Calvin Risk’s seed round. Their innovative approach, combined with a strong team and a clear vision, positions them to become a vital resource for organisations navigating the complexities of AI compliance and risk management. We believe Calvin Risk will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of AI governance and are excited to support their journey,” added Tobias Schirmer, Founding Partner at Join Capital.
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