Kosli, a provider of automated governance solutions for software delivery, has raised $10 million in Series A funding, led by Deutsche Bank’s Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) group and Heavybit. Additional investors include Defined Capital and Transpose Platform, along with several angel investors.
The investment follows a growing need for financial institutions to modernize governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) processes in software development. With this funding, Kosli has also launched Kosli Enterprise, introducing advanced features tailored for large-scale financial organizations.
Financial institutions operate in highly regulated environments, where governance processes have not kept pace with cloud and DevOps transformations. This lag creates bottlenecks, increasing costs and delaying software deployment.
A 2024 McKinsey survey found that 41% of global financial institutions consider metrics and reporting a key weakness in their infrastructure. Kosli aims to bridge this gap by automating compliance, change management, and audit processes.
"Kosli addresses the specific needs of software development teams that operate in highly regulated industries," said Martin Reeves, who leads Engineering Platforms and Practice at Deutsche Bank’s Technology, Data, and Innovation division. "We are delighted to partner and collaborate with Kosli to drive our vision of a highly efficient, transparent, and secure software development lifecycle that empowers our engineers to focus on developing solutions for the bank’s clients."
The new capital will fuel Kosli’s expansion across large banking institutions, supporting enterprise clients like Deutsche Bank and Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank. Funds will be used to:
"With the emergence of AI and the rapid growth we're experiencing, governance is more critical than ever," said Sean Longton, CIO at Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank. "So, we need the right tools and the right mindset, and with Kosli we're getting the product capability and the strategic guidance that we need."
Founded in 2019, Kosli provides a real-time governance and compliance platform designed for financial institutions and regulated industries. The platform automates compliance checks, records every change in the software pipeline, and generates provable audit trails—ensuring software security and regulatory compliance.
Kosli Enterprise, launched alongside the funding announcement, offers:
“Right now, teams in regulated industries are basing control and audit decisions on information that is written into text boxes. It destroys software delivery performance with manual work, and piles up errors and risks that are found retrospectively in audits or system failures,” said Kosli CEO and co-founder Mike Long. “We want to transform this broken process with controls engineering so that teams can deliver compliant, secure changes quickly at scale.”
The rapid rise of AI-generated software has increased demand for security validation, compliance automation, and auditability. Investors believe Kosli is positioned to lead this transformation.
“At Heavybit, we recognize the importance of being able to guarantee, in an era of AI-generated software, what software is running and when. We're excited to support Kosli's mission of delivering software more securely and with more accountability,” added Heavybit Managing Director, Tom Drummond.
Mark Trevitt, Founding Partner at Defined, echoed this sentiment: "Defined partnered with Kosli as the rapid rise of AI-generated software has resulted in significant new demands around code review, security validation, quality assurance and regulatory compliance. This increased verification overhead arguably offsets a considerable amount of the productivity gains. We’re excited by Kosli’s solution as it addresses these bottlenecks to unlock compliant DevOps automation at scale."
