Optro, formerly known as AuditBoard, has announced the acquisition of Midship, an AI-native SOX automation solution backed by Y Combinator, in a move the company said represents a significant milestone in delivering the first and only agentic system of action for governance, risk, and compliance. The acquisition immediately delivers enterprise-grade AI agents to Optro’s customers, automating up to 87% of SOX program management and freeing internal auditors to focus on strategic risk rather than administrative tasks. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Founded in 2024 by Kieran Taylor, Aahel Iyer, and Max Maio, Midship was built by veteran AI practitioners with firsthand experience in SOX compliance technology. Taylor, a former internal audit technologist at Deloitte and Instacart, developed the vision for Midship while building SOX compliance infrastructure during Instacart’s IPO process. The Midship team will join Optro’s product organization and continue building innovative agentic solutions. Key capabilities now available to customers include unstructured data ingestion, autonomous test execution for attribute tests such as access reviews and bank reconciliations, and automated workpaper generation in formats designed for external auditor review.
The acquisition comes amid mounting pressure on internal audit functions, with only 23% of audit teams seeing budget increases and 19% facing cuts, according to The IIA’s 2026 North American Pulse of Internal Audit Survey. Midship will be fully integrated into Optro’s Controls Management solution, combining autonomous testing with Optro’s recently announced AI Narratives and Flowcharts, Fieldwork Automations, and Continuous Control Monitoring capabilities. The deal follows Optro’s recent rebranding from AuditBoard and its acquisition of FairNow, a purpose-built AI Governance solution.
Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton acted as legal advisor to Optro, and Kirkland & Ellis acted as legal advisor to Midship.
KEY QUOTES:
“We moved internal audit from spreadsheets to the cloud, and now we are leveraging agentic AI to transform the function from tactical and manual to strategic and automated. By embedding the market’s leading agentic SOX solution directly into Optro’s system of action, we are delivering the next generation of AI to our customers.”
Raul Villar Jr., CEO, Optro
“The Midship team has spent countless hours with internal auditors, both before and after Midship existed, understanding the pain they face. We are thrilled to integrate our agentic capabilities into Optro’s platform to help teams across the globe automate the heavy lifting of controls testing.”
Kieran Taylor, CEO and Co-Founder, Midship
