Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company, a San Francisco-based InsurTech focused on building trust and accountability in AI systems, has officially launched alongside a $15m seed funding round.
The seed round was led by Nat Friedman’s NFDG, with additional backing from Emergence, Terrain, and notable angel investors such as Anthropic co-founder Ben Mann, and former chief information security officers from Google Cloud and MongoDB.
AIUC is on a mission to unlock enterprise AI adoption by developing a “confidence infrastructure” for artificial intelligence agents. As businesses navigate growing pressure to adopt AI tools amidst regulatory and reputational risks, AIUC aims to make the process safer and more predictable.
The company’s core solution is built around three pillars: standards, audits, and insurance. The AIUC-1 framework—described as “SOC-2 for AI agents”—provides a clear and auditable set of criteria rooted in globally trusted frameworks such as the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, the EU AI Act, and MITRE’s ATLAS. This is designed to give enterprises a trustworthy foundation for evaluating AI tools.
Through its auditing process, AIUC tests AI systems against its proprietary standard to assess safety and identify vulnerabilities before deployment. The company also offers insurance products for AI vendors and buyers, with coverage terms tied to the results of these audits—aligning safety with incentives and helping reduce barriers to enterprise adoption.
The startup draws inspiration from history, citing the role of insurance in supporting disruptive technologies from electricity to the automobile. It sees itself as the next iteration of that legacy—creating the trust layer that allows AI to progress responsibly.
The founding team comprises AI and insurance veterans. CEO Rune Kvist was previously at Anthropic and is on the board of the Center for AI Safety. CTO Brandon Wang is a Thiel Fellow and former founder in consumer underwriting. Rajiv Dattani, a former McKinsey partner, brings institutional insurance experience and helped lead evaluations of OpenAI and Anthropic models at METR.
AIUC CEO Rune Kvist said, “This is the path forward for faster, more secure AI adoption. Every major technological leap in history, from electricity and automobiles to flight and the internet, was unlocked by private market insurance. That is what we’re building for this major leap. Confidence infrastructure that rewards responsibility, unlocks speed, and enables enterprises to make informed decisions.”
This marks AIUC’s first disclosed funding round.
Read the daily FinTech news
Copyright © 2025 FinTech Global
