Daphni announced that it led a $4 million seed round in Certo, a company building AI agents for regulatory compliance across the beauty and consumer goods industries.
The company is focused on helping compliance teams replace spreadsheets, PDFs, and manual review processes with AI-driven systems that verify products against live regulations across multiple countries and markets. According to the announcement, Certo’s platform supports the full product compliance lifecycle, including raw materials, formulas, claims, labeling, and market entry requirements.
Daphni noted that regulatory complexity continues to increase across beauty and consumer packaged goods sectors, while many companies still rely on outdated manual processes to manage compliance across dozens of geographies. Certo’s AI agents provide auditable reasoning for ingredient and geography-specific regulatory checks, allowing companies to manage compliance more efficiently.
The company is already working with several major beauty and consumer packaged goods groups across Europe and the United States.
Daphni said the opportunity extends beyond software, pointing to the large global market for compliance consultants, outsourced regulatory teams, and manual processes. The firm believes Certo’s long-term advantage comes from the multiple layers of compliance data it is building, including structured public regulations, copyrighted reference databases, and proprietary customer standards.
The investment firm added that these data layers create a growing competitive moat that strengthens with each customer added to the platform.
KEY QUOTES:
“We’re backing Certo, which just raised a $4M seed round.
As regulatory complexity explodes across the beauty and consumer goods industries, most compliance teams still rely on spreadsheets, PDFs, and manual checks to manage product launches across dozens of markets (yes, in 2026 😅). Plus, every country operates under its own regulations, making things even more complex.
Certo replaces that with AI agents that actually verify products against live regulations, with auditable reasoning across every ingredient and geography. The platform already covers the full lifecycle: raw materials, formulas, claims, labelling, market entry. It’s being used by some of the largest beauty and CPG groups in Europe and the US.
What convinced us goes beyond the product. Regulatory compliance in consumer goods is a massive service market. The real spend isn’t in software. It’s in consultants, outsourced teams, and manual processes.
Today Certo enters through the tool. Tomorrow it captures the outcome. The three layers of data it builds (structured public regulations, copyrighted reference databases, proprietary client standards) create a moat that deepens with every customer. That’s the foundation for something much larger than a compliance tool.
Huge congratulations to the entire Certo team! Proud to lead this round and excited for the journey ahead 👏”
Daphni
