Nov 24, 2024

PALO ALTO — Trustero, a Silicon Valley-based provider of AI-powered Security and Compliance, has closed a $10.35 million Series A funding round led by Bright Pixel Capital (formerly Sonae IM), with participation from existing investors Engineering Capital, Zetta Ventures Partners, and Vertex Ventures US. Trustero is proving that AI can drive real revenue and operational breakthroughs in GRC, a space traditionally dominated by complex, high-cost, and manual processes. “With Trustero, organizations no longer need to be weighed down by compliance. We offer human-quality, actionable GRC intelligence in seconds, without the high fees,” said Phillip Liu, CEO of Trustero. “The Trust Graph is our secret weapon, allowing us to ingest diverse data sources from GRC platforms, cloud providers, and more, delivering insights instantly.” Trustero’s founder and CEO,  Phillip Liu , is a tech entrepreneur with a proven track record. Formerly, he founded SignalFx, a leader in cloud monitoring solutions, which was acquired by Splunk for over $1 billion. His early experience at Facebook and Opsware further distinguished him as a trusted name in Silicon Valley. Now, he turns his focus to Compliance and Security, seeing a new opportunity to revolutionize the field with AI, bringing agile, cost-effective solutions to an industry struggling with resource-intensive and manual workflows. Since its founding in 2020, Trustero has grown significantly by helping organizations reduce compliance costs and the time commitments of their senior executives. Companies with complex compliance demands like  Chassi , an AI-powered analytics platform, have experienced the most substantial time and cost savings. They added Trustero AI to their ISO 27001 compliance program in 2024. “For our organization, the time savings were substantial—approximately 10-to-1 overall, and for my role, the efficiency gains approached 100-to-1,” stated Justin Dooley, CFO of Chassi. “Additionally, we reduced internal audit costs by 75% due to the comprehensive data preparation capabilities.” The new capital will be instrumental in driving Trustero’s development of more powerful and accurate AI for security and compliance, scaling operations, expanding market reach, and adding top-tier talent from AI engineering and GRC. Trustero has already made one executive hire since raising their Series A, bringing in  George Totev  as Chief Information Security Officer. He’s tasked with enhancing the company’s security capabilities and driving innovation in AI-driven GRC solutions. George comes from Snowflake, where he led the Customer Trust team, managing 30+ certifications and customer security compliance. Previously, he built Atlassian’s Risk & Compliance function and held key roles at Visa, Goldman Sachs, Symantec, and The World Bank. Trustero’s technology is backed by its patented Trust Graph, which delivers unprecedented speed, accuracy, and cost savings in GRC intelligence. The Trust Graph is the core engine that enables Trustero to answer complex security questions in seconds, perform gap analyses across frameworks like FedRAMP and ISO 27001, and provide powerful audits, evidence mapping, and remediation guidance. This innovation differentiates Trustero from traditional GRC programs that rely on high-cost external consultants or limited manual processes. “Companies are overwhelmed by the growing compliance demands driven either by evolving regulations or increasing customer compliance requirements. With Trustero, compliance and security teams go beyond simple compliance automation, by having a human-like AI-advisor that interprets not only the controls but also the evidence, in a manner comparable to how a human would,” explains Daniela Coutinho, Manager at Bright Pixel Capital.