As companies tackle AI systems, governance has emerged as a key challenge. Some are taking a dual approach. One model handles incoming queries while the second model ensures that the first model doesn’t cause problems.
That’s the premise of ZeroDrift, a new AI compliance service that announced a $10 million seed round on Tuesday. (Investors include a16z Speedrun, Reign Ventures, PitchDrive Ventures and U&I Ventures, among others.) The company deals entirely with the second part of the system, which sits between the AI model and the end user and flags and replaces any messages that might indicate compliance issues.
It may seem strange to build an AI system to correct the mistakes of another AI system. However, ZeroDrift’s correction system has several architectural advantages over the model it is modifying. The system is driven by existing programs that decisively enforce known compliance standards such as SOC 2 or GDPR. LLM comes only after a message has been flagged to recreate a compatible version of the same message.
“We have an LLM that can deterministically identify what all the regulatory areas are, what the violations are, and then rewrite them,” says Aroomoogan.
Importantly, the entire system can run with lower latency and higher reliability than traditional LLM. This is a key advantage for the company over larger labs like OpenAI and Anthropic, which often already exist in their underlying systems.
The most obvious use cases are AI chatbots already deployed in front of consumers, which can have serious consequences for poor answers. However, Aroomoogan sees the overall addressable market as potentially much larger, spanning AI-generated messages that cannot be seen by humans and are only generated within automated systems. It’s still a relatively small market, but one that will grow as AI spreads.
If the fundraising is any indication, there’s a lot of pent-up demand for the product. “It was probably the fastest fundraising I’ve ever done in my life,” CEO Kumesh Aroomoogan said, crediting Andressen Horowitz with helping him structure the seed round. “We would be closed in three weeks and oversubscribed by three times the amount.”
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