Sphinx has received USD 7.1 million in a seed funding round to scale AI-enabled compliance agents for financial institutions.
The compliance technology company announced the funding round on 17 February 2026, led by Cherry Ventures with participation from Y Combinator, Rebel Fund, Deel Ventures, and Singularity Capital. Funds will support the expansion of the company's agentic compliance workforce, which serves banks and fintech companies in AML, KYC, and KYB operations.
Sphinx develops browser-native agents operating within existing institutional tools, including case management systems, third-party portals, documents, email, and internal dashboards. The agents conduct AML and KYB checks, review alerts, gather supporting research, draft requests for information, and generate audit trails without requiring system replacements or integrations. Institutions typically deploy the technology within days.
Agentic AI addresses compliance operational burdens
Alexandre Berkovic, Co-Founder and CEO of Sphinx, stated that compliance operations today largely consist of manual connections between systems not designed to work together. Sphinx performs this work directly, enabling analysts to focus on judgment-based decisions while institutions maintain complete, defensible records of every compliance decision.
The browser-native architecture enables global deployment across several regions, adapting to different workflows and regulatory requirements. Customers include banks, public companies, and fintech firms using the platform to reduce manual review workloads, clear alert backlogs, and scale operations without additional hiring.
In production deployments, Sphinx agents have processed millions of alerts and hundreds of thousands of cases, according to company data. Several institutions operate internationally without expanding compliance headcount, reducing operational costs by up to four times.
Market positioning in compliance technology
Global compliance spending exceeds USD 200 billion annually across internal teams and outsourced review operations. Sphinx targets this expenditure by automating manual review tasks traditionally performed by human analysts.
Filip Dames, Founding Partner at Cherry Ventures, noted that Sphinx functions as critical operational infrastructure, meeting teams within existing systems and procedures. Few products operate effectively within that level of complexity, which drives rapid adoption across banks and fintech companies.
Sphinx competes with compliance automation providers, including Chainalysis, Sardine, ComplyAdvantage, and established regtech platforms. Co-founders Alexandre Berkovic and Chrisjan Wüst previously built AML and onboarding infrastructure for over 15 million users before establishing Sphinx.
