Palma.ai raises $1.8M Pre-Seed to govern and audit enterprise AI agents across all platforms

Palma.ai (Berlin) has raised $1.8 million (approximately €1.7 million) in a Pre-Seed round led by D11Z, with Plug and Play Ventures, Deel (strategic), and Scale Now Ventures participating, alongside angels including executives from Cisco and Deel. Founded by Patrick Eden (CEO) and Julian Kolbe (CTO), the company is building a centralised governance and audit layer for enterprise AI agents.

The platform lets IT and security teams define what AI agents can do — which systems they can access, which actions they can take, under which conditions — and records every action in a tamper-evident audit log. It works across Claude, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and other agent platforms, giving enterprises a single control point rather than a separate governance interface for each.

The problem it solves

Enterprises deploying AI agents face an accountability gap that didn't exist before agents could take autonomous actions. When an AI agent reads a file, that is observable and largely reversible. When it sends an email, updates a database record, or executes a payment instruction, the action is consequential and may be hard to undo. If that action violates a policy — internal data handling rules, GDPR restrictions on personal data processing, financial controls — the question of who is responsible, and whether the organisation can demonstrate it had adequate oversight, becomes a material compliance issue.

Most current AI governance tools operate at the model level — managing which models an organisation can use, or filtering outputs. Palma.ai operates at the action level — governing what agents can do once deployed, regardless of which model they run on.

Why Deel's stake matters

Deel processes payroll and HR data for thousands of companies globally. Payroll is one of the highest-stakes surfaces for AI agent access: a misrouted payment, an incorrect tax filing, or an inadvertent disclosure of salary data carries direct legal and financial consequences. Deel investing at pre-seed — before Palma.ai has proven enterprise scale — signals that the problem is live and close to home. A strategic stake at this stage typically means the investor intends to use the product, which gives Palma.ai both a reference customer and a distribution channel.

Eden frames the proposition directly: "Every company is about to give AI agents the keys to its systems. The question is whether anyone is watching the door." At $1.8M, the round leaves much to prove — cross-platform integrations, enterprise trust, and the compliance certifications that large organisations require before putting a governance tool in their security stack.