AI Clear is known as an independent AI transparency rating agency, and it operates a public registry that scores companies on how transparently they disclose their use of AI, particularly in regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare, and insurance. According to the site, companies are graded using a published methodology rather than self-reported surveys. Pulse 2.0 interviewed AI Clear founder Eduardo Samayoa to learn more.
Eduardo Samayoa’s Background
Could you tell me more about your background? Samayoa said:
“I am from El Salvador. I came to the United States for university, studied at the University of Colorado Boulder, and have spent my career building companies. After my work authorization lapsed, I moved to Mexico and started from scratch. I built Simplo, a digital marketplace for construction materials, which grew until it was acqui-hired by one of the largest players in the Mexican construction industry.”
“From there, I came back to building in AI with thinker, a marketing platform for e-commerce, and incorporated in the United States in 2025. Alongside that, I contribute to running Perpetuo Capital as an investor, a family office focused on education and workforce. AI Clear is what I am building now, and it came directly out of my own experience on the receiving end of an automated decision.”
Formation Of The Company
How did the idea for the company come together? Samayoa shared:
“In November 2025, I filed for an O-1A visa, the classification for individuals of extraordinary ability in business. I had built companies across three countries and met every criterion. In March 2026, the petition was denied. What stayed with me was the language of the letter. It read mechanical and formulaic, as though a system had reached the conclusion and a person had signed it.”
“That sent me to the Department of Homeland Security’s public AI Use Case Inventory, where I found that USCIS alone runs 29 distinct AI systems across immigration processing, and that the agency publishes no data comparing AI-assisted decisions to human ones. Applicants are never told whether AI touched their case. I then looked at UnitedHealth’s nH Predict algorithm, which a lawsuit alleged denied elderly patients post-acute care with a 90 percent reversal rate on appeal, while almost no one appealed.”
“The context was different from mine. The structural failure was identical: an automated system making a consequential decision, no transparency about how it reached the outcome, and no real way to challenge it. There was no independent body measuring whether companies disclosed any of this. So I built one.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Samayoa reflected:
“The one that stays with me is the first time a company I had never spoken to looked up its own score on the public registry and reached out to talk about it. That was the moment the registry stopped being a project and became something people use to see what they could not see before.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Samayoa explained:
“The foundation is the public registry at aiclear.org. It rates over 500 companies on a published five-pillar rubric and assigns a letter grade from A+ to F. The registry is open to anyone, searchable, with no paywall.”
“On top of it, we run three commercial products. AI Clear Certification is a full audit of a company’s AI documentation against its public disclosures, producing a scored scorecard and a pillar-by-pillar gap analysis, starting at $15,000. Continuous Monitoring tracks a company’s disclosure posture over time with quarterly reassessment. Enterprise Data Access delivers our ratings and analytics through an API that drops into procurement, vendor-risk, and portfolio-monitoring workflows. The rubric itself is anchored to the NIST AI Risk Management Framework and ISO/IEC 42001.”
Challenges Faced
Have you faced any challenges in your sector recently, and how did you overcome them? Samayoa acknowledged:
“The sharpest one was the regulatory ground moving under us. We built AI Clear while Colorado’s first AI law, SB 24-205, was in force. In May 2026 the legislature repealed it entirely and replaced it with SB 26-189, after a federal lawsuit challenged the old statute. A company that had anchored its product to one law would have been destabilized overnight.”
“We were not, because the rubric is built on NIST and ISO, which are durable, rather than on any single statute. We re-mapped our criteria to the new section numbers and kept moving. The lesson held: build on the framework, not on the headline.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Samayoa noted:
“We started with assessments scored by hand. We then built an automated scoring pipeline that collects public evidence and scores it against the rubric at scale, which is how the registry reached more than 500 companies.”
“Before we expand publishing further, we are hand-verifying a calibration set so the automated scores match expert judgment, and we have built an appeals process so any rated company can contest a score against the evidence behind it. The direction has been constant: more coverage, without giving up the evidence-linked rigor that makes a score defensible.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Samayoa cited:
“The public registry going live with over 500 companies rated. Releasing the rubric mapped to the NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001, and the operative clauses of the AI statutes now in force. Raising from Forum Ventures. Designing the correlation study, which tests whether companies that faced AI-related enforcement between 2022 and 2025 score below a B on our rating. And being invited to speak at the CogX Summit in London this year on independent ratings for the AI transparency era.”
Customer Success Stories
Can you share any specific customer success stories? Samayoa highlighted:
“Our strongest traction is in regulated financial services and insurance. A Colorado credit union received one of our briefings and forwarded it to its technology lead within minutes, faster than any digital outreach we have run. A global insurer’s legal team engaged on how its disclosure posture compares to peers rather than on the compliance floor. The pattern is consistent: the conversation lands when we show a company something about its own position that it cannot generate from the inside.”
Funding/Revenue
Are you able to discuss funding and/or revenue metrics? Samayoa revealed:
“We are backed by Forum Ventures. On revenue, we are early and not breaking out specific figures publicly yet. What I can describe is the model, which mirrors BitSight in cybersecurity ratings and MSCI in ESG. The rated companies do not pay for their score. The buyers are the institutions evaluating those companies, and demand-side portfolio monitoring runs from roughly $25,000 to over $200,000 a year depending on portfolio size.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) is the company pursuing? Samayoa assessed:
“The way I think about it, our addressable market is the same set of buyers who already pay for cybersecurity ratings, ESG ratings, and vendor-risk and GRC tooling, applied to AI governance. BitSight has around 3,500 paying customers monitoring more than 65,000 organizations. Every enterprise procurement team, every insurer pricing AI risk, and every investor running diligence on AI exposure is a potential buyer of an independent AI transparency score. As the EU AI Act enforces and more states pass disclosure laws, that buyer set expands rather than contracts.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Samayoa affirmed:
“Three things. First, independence that is structural, not cosmetic. The rated companies do not pay for their score, scoring and certification operate under an internal firewall, and we are standing up a methodology governance committee separate from me as CEO. Second, the rubric is published and anchored to NIST and ISO, so a score is reproducible and evidence-linked rather than a black box. Third, we do not sell the cure. We measure disclosure and define the gap.”
“Consultancies sell governance services. Compliance platforms sell internal tooling. We are the independent standard those buyers and sellers can both point to. The category itself, an AI transparency rating, did not exist as a defined thing, and we are building it the way BitSight built cybersecurity ratings.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future goals? Samayoa emphasized:
“Deepen the registry and the verification behind every score. Integrate our ratings into the procurement and GRC platforms where vendor decisions actually happen. Publish the correlation study. And reach the inflection that every successful ratings business reaches, where insurers price AI risk against the score and investors treat it as a diligence input. That is the BitSight and Moody’s path, and it is the one we are building toward.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics you would like to discuss? Samayoa concluded:
“One idea sits underneath all of it. Every generation of technology eventually requires an independent system of trust. Credit got rating agencies. Securities got auditors. Cybersecurity got ratings. AI is making consequential decisions about people at a scale that now demands the same thing, and AI Clear is building that layer.”
“We are not pro-regulation or anti-regulation. We are pro-legibility, so that whoever is writing the laws, evaluating a vendor, managing a portfolio, or building the systems can see what is actually happening.”
