Zania, a forward-thinking company focused on agentic AI solutions for security governance, risk, and compliance (GRC), has recently announced the closure of an $18 million Series A funding round. This round was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA). The funding round was oversubscribed and included contributions from investors like the Anthology Fund (backed by Menlo Ventures and Anthropic), Palm Drive Capital, and a consortium of senior executives from companies like Amazon, Airbnb, PayPal, ByteDance, Reddit, Roblox, and PwC.
The regulatory landscape is becoming increasingly complex, putting considerable pressure on compliance teams within organizations. A report released in 2024 by Fineksus highlights that global penalties associated with anti-money laundering enforcement have reached an unprecedented $19.3 billion. Furthermore, a comprehensive study conducted by Oxford Economics found that a staggering 95% of organizations have responded to these pressures by increasing their compliance budgets by an average of 12% year-over-year.
Despite these investments, many legacy GRC tools are limited to providing basic dashboards. This limitation forces companies to maintain large teams of personnel who must perform the manual labor necessary to address the issues these dashboards highlight. It is therefore not surprising that nearly 98% of organizations are planning to integrate AI into their compliance initiatives by 2026. This shift creates a significant demand for intelligent automation that delivers concrete results rather than merely generating reports.
Zania is responding to this urgent need with its innovative solution: AI “teammates” designed for specific domains. These AI systems are capable of executing a wide range of tasks, including conducting risk assessments, collecting and managing evidence, testing internal controls, and performing thorough gap analyses.
By utilizing these advanced capabilities, Zania streamlines workflows that previously took months into just minutes. For instance, one of Zania’s standout offerings, the Gap Assessment module, can process thousands of policies and evidence files across more than 80 languages. It effectively maps these documents to hundreds of established control requirements, enabling organizations to pinpoint deficiencies swiftly and accurately.
Since its founding, Zania has achieved remarkable momentum, experiencing an extraordinary tenfold increase in annual recurring revenue (ARR) within the last six months alone. This growth is underscored by recent partnerships with notable clients, including fintech leader Plaid, the esteemed global accounting and advisory firm Grant Thornton, Stanford University, and one of the Big Four accounting firms.
To further support its offerings, Zania has cultivated strategic alliances with major consulting and IT services providers, such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and HCLTech. These collaborations are designed to enhance the distribution and reach of Zania’s AI compliance agents, helping more organizations benefit from their innovative solutions.
Moving forward, Zania plans to utilize this funding to address the surging market demand for its services. The company intends to triple the size of its engineering and go-to-market teams, thereby accelerating the development of its agentic AI platform. And this platform is uniquely designed to orchestrate complex, end-to-end compliance workflows—not merely tracking tasks, but also executing them effectively and efficiently.
KEY QUOTES:
“Zania has experienced explosive growth in revenue and customers since we launched our first AI agents late last year. We’re excited to continue revolutionizing the security risk, compliance, and audit space by transforming it from tools that merely organize work into true AI teammates that execute highly complex and critical tasks from start to finish.”
Shruti Gupta, Founder and CEO of Zania
“Cybersecurity GRC is mission‑critical, yet workflows remain manual, painful, and impossible to scale. Shruti and the team at Zania bring together a rare combination of battle‑tested cybersecurity, GRC, and agentic AI expertise, giving enterprises minutes‑not‑months speed. Their strong product‑market fit is already driving rapid adoption, and we’re thrilled to lead Zania’s Series A.”
Mustafa Neemuchwala, Partner at NEA
“Zania’s AI agents have made our risk assessments dramatically faster and more efficient. By automating evidence collection and analysis, they turned a manual marathon into a sprint, freeing our team to focus on strategic risk management.”
Kenneth Moras, Head of Security GRC, Plaid
