The Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company launches with $15M to help enterprises deploy AI with confidence

Insurance built the modern world. It will unlock AI's future progress.

SAN FRANCISCO, July 23, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Superintelligence is within reach. In just five years, AI has advanced from preschool-level capabilities to systems that can reason and act with the skill of an undergraduate. Proof of concepts are emerging across industries—from finance and legal to healthcare, drug discovery, and frontier technologies—but enterprises hesitate to deploy AI agents that feel like black boxes. They don't know which tools they can trust or who will be accountable if something goes wrong. There's a fear that hallucinated responses or unsafe outputs could lead to customer harm, revenue loss, regulatory risk, or reputational fallout.

Today, the Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company (AIUC) launches to unlock the next wave of AI progress by building the confidence infrastructure for AI agents. The company also announces a $15 million seed round led by Nat Friedman at NFDG, with participation from Emergence, Terrain and others including Ben Mann, co-founder of Anthropic; and former chief information security officers at Google Cloud and MongoDB.

Enterprises are walking a tightrope. On the one hand, they face an "adopt or die" moment as their industries are transforming overnight. On the other hand, when AI fails spectacularly, the consequences are steep and customer trust is breached. AIUC gives enterprises a way to adopt AI with confidence, before their competitors do it faster.

This playbook is time-tested throughout American history. In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin responded to the fires ravaging Philadelphia not with bans, but with the country's first mutual fire insurance company. In the 19th century, when electricity posed new threats, insurance companies built UL Labs to test and certify the new technology. In the 20th century, as cars shaped modern life, insurers created safety standards and crash tests. Each time, insurance has made bold progress possible, before regulators could catch up.

To help enterprises deploy AI agents with confidence, AIUC is structured around three pillars:

• Standards. AIUC-1 is a security and risk framework built specifically for AI agents. Think of it as "SOC-2 for AI agents." The standard is designed to speed up enterprise adoption by addressing the technical, legal and operational safeguards that matter most to enterprise buyers. AIUC-1 builds on existing trusted frameworks, including the NIST's AI Risk Management Framework, the EU AI Act, and MITRE's ATLAS–and goes further by defining clear, auditable requirements. That means AI companies can be certified against it, giving enterprises a concrete signal of safety and trust.
   
• Audits. For AI agents, independent audits give enterprises the confidence to adopt these systems. AIUC conducts rigorous testing of AI agents against the AIUC-1 standard. These audits identify vulnerabilities, quantify risk, and give enterprises a clear view of the AI systems they are evaluating, before actually deploying. This process is structured to be objective, repeatable, and aligned with enterprise-grade expectations for safety and trust.
   
• Insurance. AIUC offers liability coverage for AI vendors and their customers in case an agent fails. The cost and availability of insurance are tied directly to audit results: safer systems are offered better terms. This aligns incentives for builders, buyers and insurers, making it easier for enterprises to adopt new technology with confidence.

"This is the path forward for faster, more secure AI adoption", said Rune Kvist, co-founder and CEO. "Every major technological leap in history, from electricity and automobiles to flight and the internet, was unlocked by private market insurance. That is what we're building for this major leap. Confidence infrastructure that rewards responsibility, unlocks speed, and enables enterprises to make informed decisions."

The founding team brings deep experience across AI safety and institutional risk. Rune Kvist (co-founder, CEO) was the first product and go-to-market hire at Anthropic. He also sits on the board of the Center for AI Safety. Brandon Wang (co-founder, CTO) is a Thiel Fellow who previously founded a consumer underwriting business. Rajiv Dattani (co-founder) is a former McKinsey partner who led work in the global insurance sector, and was COO of METR, a research non-profit that evaluated OpenAI and Anthropic's models before deployment.

For more information, visit www.aiuc.com.

About Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company
The Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company (AIUC) helps enterprises answer one critical question: Can we trust this AI agent? Founded by a team of leaders from Anthropic, McKinsey, Center for AI Safety, and METR, AIUC combines audits, standards, and insurance to enable confident AI adoption to unlock progress.

SOURCE Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company