Curiosity, a Dutch venture capital fund focused on seed-stage investments in AI startups in Northern Europe, announces its investment in Strise, a Norwegian technology company offering one of the leading KYC intelligence systems. In collaboration with other investors, €3.3 million was made available to further expand Strise’ technological leadership across Europe.
Strise offers fast-growing banks and fintechs a smart system to automate KYC processes, drive better performance, and quickly operationalise regulatory changes to comply with modern Anti-Money Laundering (AML) standards.
"We are on a mission to introduce the leading KYC Intelligence System globally. Our technology uniquely connects information about companies and persons that we leverage into unparalleled insights to screen, onboard, and provide ongoing customer monitoring. Three extremely expensive problems that regulated companies face. We believe we can make a significant difference in this space," says Marit Rødevand, CEO and co-founder of Strise.
Strise leverages network, AI and NLP technologies embedded into an intelligent KYC system that helps regulated companies automate compliance processes – increasing operational efficiency while reducing regulatory risk at 100x the speed compared to traditional approaches. Since Strise launched its products commercially in 2020, the company has grown to become the leading KYC Intelligence System, used daily by powerhouses in banking and finance, such as Nordea, Danske Bank and the SpareBank1 Alliance.
The Dutch venture capital fund Curiosity led the round, with the participation of existing investor Maki.vc and new investors Sondo Capital and Likeminded.
"We see this investment as a huge recognition of our leading technology and our team's fantastic work to date. Raising new capital in today's market sentiment is challenging for many scale-up companies. Therefore, we are extra proud to have secured this funding round”, Rødevand continues.
The capital will be used primarily by Strise to fuel international growth across Europe and amplify the system's ability to connect deeper with Strise customers' existing ecosystems through its upcoming product, “Strise Connect”. Additionally, the company will further strengthen its partnership program and roll out "Strise Global", their new product for counterparty due diligence and global sanctions checks, launching on the 9th of November.
"We are seeing a massive increase in the need for advanced KYC systems worldwide to comply with regulations and avoid facilitating illegal activities. Strise has taken an innovative approach, integrating data sources and AI-driven insights into an intuitive interface for KYC teams to manage their workflow, which compliance teams love. In addition, we were impressed by the drive and creativity of the Strise team, led by founders Marit, Sigve and Patrick. We look forward to working with them to make Strise the market leader across Europe," says Herman Kienhuis, General Partner at Curiosity.
About Strise
Strise is an Oslo-based technology company, founded in 2016 by Marit Rødevand, Sigve Søråsen and Patrick Skjennum. Strise offers financial institutions a KYC intelligence and workflow system to screen and onboard business customers and continuously monitor them throughout the customer life cycle to comply with anti-money laundering (AML) and sanction laws.
www.strise.ai, press contact: lars@strise.ai, podcast: The Laundry
