Naaia raises €6M Series A to make AI Act compliance a live operating layer, not a checklist

Naaia, a Paris-based AI governance startup founded in 2022 by Nathalie Beslay (CEO), Olivia Rime, Benjamin May — three lawyers by training — and Côme Sauzay, has raised €6 million in a Series A led by Ventech, with participation from unnamed operators from the software industry, including founders and executives of a fintech unicorn. The capital goes to French and European expansion and to developing new AI compliance agents covering the EU AI Act, the Cyber Resilience Act, ISO 42001, and the NIST AI RMF.

The AI Act compliance gap

The EU AI Act is not a future obligation. Enforcement is underway for high-risk AI systems — those used in hiring, credit, safety infrastructure, and critical services — and large organisations deploying AI across these domains are required to demonstrate active governance: that they know what their AI systems are doing, that they can audit the decisions, and that they can prove control to a regulator.

Most cannot. The gap between deploying AI and being able to govern it is not a question of intent but of infrastructure. AI governance requires continuous monitoring, not periodic audits — systems change with updates, new models get deployed, use cases expand. Naaia's platform provides the real-time layer: AI agents that monitor AI deployments continuously, surface compliance risks, and generate the audit trails that regulators and internal risk teams require.

"Organisations are facing an unprecedented paradox in the history of transformative technologies," Beslay said. "The more artificial intelligence they deploy, the more they lose visibility, control, and the ability to demonstrate mastery. With Naaia, we are pursuing a single objective: to make trusted AI not a constraint that slows organisations down, but the infrastructure that accelerates them."

Lawyers who built the compliance product

The founding team's legal background is not incidental. Nathalie Beslay, Olivia Rime, and Benjamin May are all lawyers with experience at the intersection of technology regulation and enterprise risk. Côme Sauzay brings the digital transformation experience. Together, the combination produces a product that is designed around what regulators actually require rather than what an engineer imagined they might.

Jean Bourcereau, president and managing partner at Ventech, described the investment logic: "We had identified Compliance and Auditability as critical prerequisites for the large-scale deployment of AI agents in enterprises and were looking for the right platform to invest in to lead this category. Naaia's founding team convinced us through its deep business expertise in this field, which is reflected in an impressive commercial deployment among major global enterprise leaders."

The phrase "major global enterprise leaders" is the key signal. At Series A, that means the product is already operating at enterprise scale — not in pilots, not in proofs of concept.

The enforcement window

The EU AI Act's enforcement calendar creates a specific window of competitive opportunity for compliance infrastructure. As enforcement obligations activate across sectors, the companies that have already built an enterprise client base will be the default choice for expansion. Companies trying to enter the market in 12 months will face entrenched relationships.

Naaia's Series A is an attempt to use that window: expand the French client base, move into other European markets, and develop the agent coverage across the expanding regulatory landscape (the Cyber Resilience Act adds cybersecurity AI compliance obligations that layer on top of the AI Act). The 18-month risk is whether larger RegTech incumbents build a credible AI governance product before Naaia reaches sufficient scale to be defensible.