ZeroDrift has emerged from stealth mode, announcing $2 million in pre-seed funding led by a16z speedrun. The startup aims to address the growing conflict between the need for speed in regulated industries and the persistent drag of compliance.
The company's platform functions as a communication firewall, integrating directly into existing enterprise tools like email, CRMs, and AI systems. It validates every outbound message against financial regulations (SEC, FINRA) and internal policies in real-time, preventing non-compliant communications before they are sent.
Automating Compliance in the AI Era
Traditional compliance processes, often relying on manual reviews and post-hoc analysis, struggle to keep pace with the volume and velocity of modern communication, especially with the rise of AI-driven tools. ZeroDrift's approach shifts compliance from a bottleneck to an automated guardrail.
"Compliance should be a guardrail that lets teams move faster, not a gate that slows everything down," said Kumesh Aroomoogan, ZeroDrift founder and CEO. Aroomoogan previously founded Accern, an AI platform for financial services which he exited in 2025, experiencing firsthand how compliance reviews could stall product launches and alter communication habits.
ZeroDrift encodes regulatory and firm-specific policies into machine-readable rulepacks enforced at the point of content creation. The platform flags issues and suggests corrections, ensuring compliant messages proceed without delay. This offers compliance teams centralized dashboards, audit trails, and automatically generated, exam-ready evidence.
Expanding Beyond Finance
Initially targeting financial services sectors like registered investment advisors and asset managers, ZeroDrift plans to expand its AI compliance solutions to insurance, healthcare, ESG disclosures, and AI governance. The long-term vision is to establish ZeroDrift as a universal trust layer for any communication system.
"Compliance has quietly become a limiting factor for how fast regulated companies can operate," noted Troy Kirwin from a16z speedrun. "ZeroDrift flips that dynamic by preventing violations before they happen and making compliance a built-in part of everyday workflows."
