When Mikkel Skarnager and Ciprian Florescu sold HelloFlow to Trulioo in early 2022 for what sources pegged at more than $50 million, they'd barely had time to prove the concept. Less than two years from founding to exit. Now, with their second act—a compliance automation platform called Spektr—the Copenhagen-based pair have attracted something arguably harder to land than a quick acquisition: a $20 million Series A led by New Enterprise Associates, the 47-year-old Silicon Valley giant with more than $35 billion under management.
The round, announced April 16, puts Spektr's total raise just shy of $26 million and represents a noteworthy wager by a top-tier U.S. venture firm on European financial infrastructure at a moment when regulatory scrutiny is intensifying on both sides of the Atlantic. For NEA partner Luke Pappas, who joined Spektr's board with the investment, the appeal seems straightforward enough: compliance is still mostly manual labor dressed up in software, and someone will eventually automate the actual work, not just the workflows around it.
"The goal is software screens everything continuously," Pappas told Crunchbase News, "and compliance experts handle the exceptions." That vision—a future where human compliance officers focus on edge cases rather than grinding through every customer verification—has become something of a mantra in RegTech circles. Whether Spektr can deliver on it is the open question.
A Second Bite
Skarnager and Florescu know how to move fast. They launched HelloFlow in 2020, built an identity verification tool, and flipped it to Trulioo less than two years later. This time they're aiming deeper into the stack, tackling not just the orchestration of compliance tasks but the analytical heavy lifting inside them: researching companies, parsing ownership structures, verifying business activity, interpreting documents that may or may not be legitimate.
"Compliance technology has mostly focused on workflow and data collection," Skarnager said in a statement. "But the real bottleneck has always been the work itself." It's a pitch that resonates in an industry where compliance teams at fintechs and banks still spend hours manually reviewing customer files, chasing down beneficial ownership chains, and cross-referencing sanction lists.
Spektr's approach centers on what it calls "networks of specialized AI agents"—purpose-built automations for discrete tasks like KYB verification, industry classification, ownership network discovery, address validation, license checks, document review, source of funds analysis, and false positive screening. A human-in-the-loop model lets compliance officers override agent decisions, which presumably helps with audit trails and regulatory comfort.
The company launched what it's calling Spektr 2.0 last August, introducing a modular architecture that allows customers to configure agents for specific workflows. It claims integrations—hundreds of them, according to the company—with KYC, AML, and CRM systems, including partnerships with ComplyAdvantage for screening data and Kyckr for company registry lookups.
Customers and Credibility
Spektr's client roster includes some recognizable names: Pleo, the Copenhagen-based spend management darling; Monta, the EV charging network; Phantom, the crypto wallet; and Santander Leasing. There are also what Spektr describes as "major U.S. marketplaces" it wouldn't name—a tantalizing but unverifiable claim that suggests either enterprise traction or just good marketing discipline.
One data point worth noting: Monta explicitly references Spektr in its privacy policy, stating it uses "specialized solutions provided by reputable third-party vendor Spektr" for KYC and AML compliance. It's the kind of public confirmation that lends weight to an otherwise hard-to-verify customer list.
The startup currently employs around 45 people across Copenhagen and Iași, Romania, and plans to open offices in London and New York as it pushes into new markets. Existing investors Northzone, Seedcamp, and PSV Tech (the rebranded PreSeed Ventures) all participated in the Series A alongside NEA. Spektr declined to disclose its valuation, which is standard practice but leaves the typical questions unanswered. The company raised a €5 million seed round in February 2024 from the same European backers.
Regulatory Winds
Perhaps more than the founders expected, timing has worked in their favor. The European Union's new Anti-Money Laundering Authority is gearing up in Frankfurt, having published its first multi-year strategic plan in early February. Starting in 2028, AMLA is planned to directly supervise up to 40 high-risk financial institutions—a regulatory shift that could drive increased demand for scalable, auditable compliance systems.
The market opportunity appears real, at least on paper. Global AML software revenue is projected to jump from $5.1 billion this year to $23.8 billion by 2035, an 18.7 percent compound annual growth rate, according to data from Global Market Insights published in January. Whether Spektr can capture a meaningful share of that growth is another matter entirely.
The competitive landscape is crowded and well-capitalized. Fenergo, Pegasystems, NICE Actimize, and Moody's (which bulked up its KYC capabilities by acquiring PassFort and kompany back in 2021) all play in this space. Spektr holds ISO/IEC 27001:2022, SOC 2 Type II, and ISO/IEC 42001:2023 certifications—the latter being the relatively new AI management system standard, which at least signals some organizational discipline around deploying machine learning models in high-stakes environments.
The Bet
For NEA to lead a Series A in European RegTech suggests more than casual interest. U.S. venture firms have historically been cautious about backing compliance infrastructure outside their home market, where regulatory fragmentation can slow down sales cycles and muddy go-to-market strategies. But if compliance automation can scale across jurisdictions—a big if—the upside is substantial.
Pappas appears to be betting that the shift from point solutions to end-to-end automation is inevitable, and that Spektr's founder pedigree and technical approach give it a credible shot at becoming a category leader. The fact that Skarnager and Florescu already have one exit under their belts doesn't hurt. Investors like repeat founders, especially ones who moved quickly the first time around.
The company is now hiring across engineering, sales, and product in Copenhagen, London, and Romania as it prepares for a U.S. push. Whether that expansion translates into revenue growth and market share—or just burns through the new capital—will become clearer over the next 18 months. For now, Spektr has the capital, the credentials, and the backing of a firm that's been around long enough to know what good infrastructure looks like. What it doesn't yet have is proof at scale.
