Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company (AIUC) is coming out of stealth mode with a $15 million seed round.
The San Francisco-based company said July 23 that it seeks to unlock the “next wave of artificial intelligence (AI) progress by building the confidence infrastructure for AI agents,” or systems that autonomously do tasks.
Enterprises, according to AIUC, hesitate to deploy AI even though each face pressure to do so, and they are confused about which tools to trust—or who will be held accountable is something goes wrong. “There’s a fear that hallucinated responses or unsafe outputs could lead to customer harm, revenue loss, regulatory risk, or reputational fallout,” AIUC said.
The company’s executive team includes Rune Kvist, co-founder and, CEO. He was formerly the first product and go-to-market hire at Anthropic, and he sits on the board of the Center for AI Safety. Brandon Wang, co-founder and chief technology officer, previously founded a consumer underwriting business. The third co-founder, Rajiv Dattani is a former McKinsey partner who led work in the global insurance sector. Dattani was also COO of METR, a research nonprofit that evaluated OpenAI and Anthropic’s models before deployment.
“This is the path forward for faster, more secure AI adoption”, said Kvist. “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.”
AIUC said it is structured around three pillars:
- Standards. AIUC-1 is a security and risk framework built specifically for AI agents. Think of it as “SOC-2 for AI agents.” The standard is designed to speed up enterprise adoption by addressing the technical, legal and operational safeguards that matter most to enterprise buyers. AIUC-1 builds on existing trusted frameworks, including the NIST’s AI Risk Management Framework, the EU AI Act, and MITRE’s ATLAS–and goes further by defining clear, auditable requirements. That means AI companies can be certified against it, giving enterprises a concrete signal of safety and trust.
- Audits. For AI agents, independent audits give enterprises the confidence to adopt these systems. AIUC conducts rigorous testing of AI agents against the AIUC-1 standard. These audits identify vulnerabilities, quantify risk, and give enterprises a clear view of the AI systems they are evaluating, before actually deploying. This process is structured to be objective, repeatable, and aligned with enterprise-grade expectations for safety and trust.
- Insurance. AIUC offers liability coverage for AI vendors and their customers in case an agent fails. The cost and availability of insurance are tied directly to audit results: safer systems are offered better terms. This aligns incentives for builders, buyers and insurers, making it easier for enterprises to adopt new technology with confidence.
The $15 million seed round was by Nat Friedman at NFDG, with participation from Emergence, Terrain and others including Ben Mann, co-founder of Anthropic. Former chief information security officers at Google Cloud and MongoDB are also investors.
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