Armilla AI (an assurance platform providing trust in AI through product verification and warranties) announced $4.5 million in seed funding to scale risk assurance products for AI and de-risk AI adoption for enterprises. Mistral Venture Partners led this funding round with participation from MS&AD Ventures, SixThirty Ventures, Morgan Creek Digital, and Y Combinator and insurance providers Greenlight Re and Chaucer. The funding round will enable the expansion of Armilla Guaranteed (a quality assessment and performance guarantee for AI products).
Armilla AI helps enterprises and AI vendors understand the risks of AI and establish protection when problems arise. Utilizing requirements in global AI regulations and standards such as the EU AI Act and the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, the Armilla Guaranteed platform first conducts assessments to verify the quality of an AI model, searching for threats like racial or gender bias and weak model formation. If this model does not perform as promised, then the product buyer will be reimbursed for the license fee they paid. The warranty is backed by insurers Swiss Re, Greenlight Re, and Chaucer, who are responsible for fulfilling the warranty coverage.
Armilla AI’s products not only help enterprises better understand risk but also give vendors a third-party stamp of approval to establish more trust in the market and shorten sales cycles. Armilla is already supporting AI vendors within healthcare, financial services, and manufacturing.
The company is also expanding its leadership team by hiring Jerry Gupta. Gupta, formerly a Senior Vice President at Swiss Re where he spearheaded insurance policies for emerging tech products, including cybersecurity, played a pivotal role in shaping the functionality of Armilla’s AI product warranty.
KEY QUOTES:
“With so many ways to integrate AI into a business, one of the biggest challenges for enterprises is being confident in what they are procuring from third-party AI vendors. If one of those products breaks down, it’s the enterprise that takes the hit. With the introduction of our warranty product, we’re giving enterprises a guarantee that the AI products they choose are compliant, function as advertised, and because AI is susceptible to errors, they are protected when failures do happen. We believe this will fundamentally reshape the understanding of responsible AI, and the backing from our investors will help us explore additional insurance policies that limit risk for Enterprises.”
- Karthik Ramakrishnan, CEO and co-founder of Armilla AI
“AI has huge potential to drive growth and unlock new opportunities for the enterprise, but only if AI is accurate and dependable. We jumped at the opportunity to back Armilla because they are not only helping to promote more responsible AI but also providing protection and peace of mind. When it comes to new, ever-evolving technology like AI, that’s invaluable.”
- Tiffine Wang, Partner at MS&AD Ventures
“As regulators continually offer more guidance on the use of AI, businesses need to up their game in quality and compliance. Armilla AI will help enterprises be prepared to face these regulatory challenges head-on while also minimizing direct risk to their business. The Armilla team knows that ensuring AI is fair and thoughtfully tested is the first step to making it safer for everyone and we’re proud to be a part of the warranty that will help tech leaders breathe easier as this technology evolves.”
- Raif Barbaros, Partner at Mistral Venture Partners
“Customers and brokers we’ve spoken to are generally excited about the opportunity to have some form of AI protection. As it stands, given the rapidly evolving AI risk landscape, there is little to offer these customers today. Armilla has a deep technical understanding of AI and the regulatory landscape that surrounds it, allowing them to create a platform that automates a large portion of AI risk evaluation and provide a systematic methodology for evaluating AI risk across a range of model types and use cases.’’
- Brian O’Reilly, Head of Innovation at Greenlight
