HelmGuard Raises $7.3M to Automate Enterprise Risk and Compliance with AI Agents

London-based HelmGuard has raised $7.3 million in seed funding to build an AI-agent-driven platform for governance, risk and compliance (GRC), aiming to replace paperwork-heavy compliance processes with systems that can actively assess and respond to enterprise risks.

The round was co-led by Infinity Ventures and Frontline Ventures, with participation from FinTech Collective, Stage 2 Capital, Entrepreneurs First and a group of angel investors.

The funding comes as enterprises increasingly deploy AI agents capable of making decisions and taking actions at runtime, creating new challenges for compliance and risk teams.

From Palantir and AI research to enterprise risk

HelmGuard was founded by John Daley and Jack Miller, whose backgrounds combine legal, enterprise security and artificial intelligence expertise.

CEO John Daley trained as a technology lawyer and spent eight years at Palantir, where he worked on public- and private-sector deals while also overseeing internal security, compliance and data protection.

CTO Jack Miller has a background in AI research and worked on early large language model projects at OpenAI and Google while at university.

The two founders connected through an Entrepreneur First programme organised by Matt Clifford, who subsequently became HelmGuard's first investor.

Their shared thesis is that AI-driven risk requires a fundamentally different approach to traditional compliance.

"Decisions over documents"

Traditional GRC platforms such as Vanta, Drata and Secureframe largely rely on checklists, documentation and evidence collection.

HelmGuard wants to move beyond that model.

Its AI agents bring together information covering internal compliance, third-party risk, AI governance, employees and business units into a unified graph.

The agents can then use that information to assess risks and support decisions rather than simply generating another compliance report.

The system includes several safeguards designed to keep AI-generated risk assessments accountable. Each assessment can include a confidence score, citations connecting conclusions to their underlying sources, and human review based on the importance of the decision.

Customers can configure the platform so that human approval is required only when a risk assessment reaches a predefined threshold.

Demonstrating enterprise-scale risk assessment

HelmGuard says its technology has already been used for large-scale enterprise assessments.

For one U.S. insurance customer, the platform assessed the risks associated with 1,250 counterparties in less than a week.

London-based Callosum has also used HelmGuard to establish its security and compliance programme from the ground up.

The company believes these examples demonstrate how agent-based compliance can move beyond periodic audits toward continuous risk assessment.

Competing with established GRC platforms

HelmGuard is entering a large and increasingly important GRC market.

The enterprise GRC software market was valued at approximately $72.4 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $203.7 billion by 2033, according to Grand View Research.

The startup is competing against established compliance automation platforms such as Vanta, Drata and Secureframe.

Interestingly, Frontline Ventures is also an investor in Vanta, meaning the firm's latest investment puts it behind both an established market leader and an emerging challenger in the same broader category.

HelmGuard argues that the architecture of traditional GRC platforms was designed for a slower environment, where companies completed periodic assessments and produced compliance reports.

As AI agents increasingly make decisions and take actions in real time, the company believes risk assurance must also become continuous and dynamic.

Expanding beyond the UK

HelmGuard has grown rapidly, expanding its team from three to 10 employees in just two months.

The new funding will support hiring, product development and expansion of the company's go-to-market operations beyond the UK and U.S.

The company is also planning to open a U.S. office and is targeting a Series A round within the next 12 to 18 months.

With AI agents becoming increasingly embedded in enterprise workflows, HelmGuard is betting that compliance software will need to evolve from documenting what a company does to actively understanding and managing the risks behind every important decision.