The Paris-San Francisco startup, founded by Bastien Deliège-Coste and Jean Duquenne, is already working with major global consumer goods groups. Entrepreneurs First, Motier Ventures and Transpose Platform also joined the round
French-US startup Certo, an AI-powered regulatory compliance platform for consumer goods companies, has raised a 4 million US dollars seed round led by French vc firm Daphni, with participation from Entrepreneurs First, Motier Ventures and Transpose Platform (see here the press release). The current seed round also includes support from industry advisors Alexandre Godvin and Vincent Delacourt, co-founders of AQM, the compliance and testing specialist acquired by Eurofins Scientific.
Founded between Paris and San Francisco by ceo Bastien Deliège-Coste and cto Jean Duquenne, Certo had announced its launch about nine months ago, when the founders disclosed initial backing from Entrepreneurs First and Transpose Platform. (see here the LinkedIn post) At the time, the company said it was already working with global cosmetics, personal care, nutrition and food brands.
Certo develops software that automates regulatory compliance reviews for consumer goods companies operating across multiple jurisdictions. The platform allows regulatory teams to verify formulas, ingredients, labels, marketing claims and market-entry documentation against local regulations in more than 70 countries, including the EU, US, China, South Korea, Japan and Latin America.
“What sets Certo apart from typical seed-stage companies is the caliber of its early adopters,” the company said, noting that the software is already deployed with global beauty groups, specialty brands, retailers and regulated consumer goods companies across Europe and the United States. The company said its technology addresses a structural bottleneck for international beauty and CPG groups, which increasingly face fragmented regulations on ingredients, sustainability claims, packaging waste, allergens and microplastics. Regulatory teams often still rely on spreadsheets, manual cross-checks and siloed documentation systems. Certo’s platform combines a proprietary regulatory database with specialized AI agents able to cross-check products against regulations, internal standards and retailer-specific requirements, while also generating auditable compliance reasoning and source citations.
The 4 million US dollars raised will be used to expand engineering and in-house regulatory teams, deepen regulatory coverage across additional geographies and scale commercial operations in Europe and the US.he new funding will support product development and international expansion of the company’s AI-native compliance operating system, which is already being used by major beauty and consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands in Europe and the United States.
Briac Lescure and Jonas Simonin, investors at Daphni, said: “Every consumer product sold internationally goes through a compliance process that hasn’t changed in twenty years: manual checks, scattered PDFs, expensive consultants. Whether it’s cosmetics, food, or dietary supplements, the pain is the same. Certo replaces that with AI agents that actually verify products against live regulations, with auditable reasoning across every ingredient and every geography. As Certo builds the proprietary data and trust layer that connects brands, suppliers, and regulators, we see the foundation for something much larger than a compliance tool. We’re proud at daphni to lead this round”.
