Spektr raises $20M Series A

Spektr, a Copenhagen startup that automates financial-compliance work with artificial intelligence, raised a $20 million Series A led by New Enterprise Associates on April 16. (businesswire.com) Northzone, Seedcamp, and PreSeed Ventures also joined the round, and the company said the financing brings its total funding to just under $26 million. Crunchbase News reported that Spektr did not disclose a valuation and described the new price as a significant step up from its February 2024 seed round. (businesswire.com) (news.crunchbase.com) The company sells software for “know your customer” and “know your business” checks, the identity and business-verification work banks and fintechs must do before onboarding clients and while monitoring them afterward. London Stock Exchange Group says know your customer checks focus on individuals, while know your business checks focus on companies and their ownership structures. (spektr.com) (lseg.com) Spektr says its system uses specialized artificial-intelligence agents to review corporate documents, map ownership, verify business activity, and draft risk assessments that compliance teams then approve. The company says those tasks often take analysts hours when done by hand and minutes when automated. (businesswire.com) (spektr.com) That pitch lands in a part of finance where software spending has not removed much manual work. Spektr chief executive Mikkel Skarnager told Crunchbase News that most existing compliance tools manage workflows, while Spektr is built to execute the work inside those workflows. (news.crunchbase.com) New Enterprise Associates partner Luke Pappas said financial institutions are under pressure to do more compliance work with fewer resources, and he said Spektr is targeting the most manual part of those operations. Spektr said the new money will fund product expansion and wider adoption at financial institutions globally. (businesswire.com) Spektr was founded in 2023 by Mikkel Skarnager, Ciprian Florescu, Jeremy Joly, and Jan-Erik Wagner. Crunchbase News reported that Skarnager and Florescu previously built digital-onboarding startup HelloFlow and sold it to Trulioo in under two years for more than $50 million. (cbinsights.com) (news.crunchbase.com) The company says customers already using the platform include Pleo, Santander Leasing, Mercuryo, Phantom, and Monta. The bet behind the round is straightforward: if compliance teams can spend less time copying data between registries, websites, and forms, banks can move onboarding and monitoring faster without removing human sign-off. (businesswire.com) (news.crunchbase.com)