Certivo, a Seattle-based startup using artificial intelligence to automate supply-chain compliance, has raised a $4 million seed round led by Suffolk Technologies, adding fresh capital as manufacturers and construction-related suppliers grapple with a growing thicket of product, safety and sustainability rules.
The financing included participation from Pioneer Square Ventures and other investors, the company said. Certivo plans to use the proceeds to accelerate product development, expand engineering and AI capabilities, and scale go-to-market efforts across manufacturing and what it calls the “built world,” spanning building materials and construction supply chains.
The company is positioning its software as an “AI-native compliance automation” platform — essentially an always-on system designed to replace compliance work that remains heavily manual in many organizations, despite decades of digitization elsewhere in enterprise operations. Certivo said its platform centers on a “Compliance System of Record” powered by an AI agent called CORA that requests and validates supplier documentation, monitors regulatory changes across jurisdictions, maps obligations to product portfolios and integrates into ERP and procurement systems to maintain a real-time compliance record.
“Compliance complexity grows exponentially as companies scale,” Certivo Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder Kunal Chopra said in the announcement. “The regulatory wave around PFAS, DPP, CRA, and sustainability isn’t slowing down. It’s accelerating. Enterprises need infrastructure that scales with it. We built Certivo as an AI-native system that makes compliance continuous, proactive, and durable.”
Suffolk Technologies, the venture arm affiliated with construction firm Suffolk, framed the pitch as less about adding another software layer and more about removing friction across an industry known for fragmented stakeholders and process bottlenecks. “As the construction and the broader built world sectors face unprecedented labor shortages, we consistently see compliance as a source of friction amongst the fragmented stakeholder set,” said Wan Li Zhu, co-founder and managing director of Suffolk Technologies. “Certivo’s AI innovations can transform compliance from an operational constraint into a source of durable advantage.”
Certivo prior funding and origins
The company spun out of Pioneer Square Labs in 2024 through a partnership with Fortive, the industrial technology company, and previously raised an undisclosed amount from Pioneer Square Ventures, Fortive and the AI Studio Fund.
Including the new seed round, Certivo’s total funding to date is about $6 million, according to GeekWire. This implies roughly $2 million of earlier capital even though the company did not disclose the earlier round size.
Certivo is led by Chopra, a longtime Seattle-area tech executive and former chief executive of e-commerce software company Kaspien and collectibles firm Beckett Collectibles.
Why this matters
The pitch lands amid heightened scrutiny of chemical content (including PFAS), embodied-carbon reporting and supply-chain transparency requirements that can vary by jurisdiction and customer. For manufacturers and building-product suppliers, compliance work often involves collecting certificates and declarations from thousands of suppliers, tracking overlapping standards, and responding to customer questionnaires — tasks that are document-heavy and prone to gaps when handled through spreadsheets, email and point solutions.
Certivo is betting that “agentic” AI — software designed to operate continuously, ingest unstructured documents and monitor evolving rules — can take on the repetitive work while compliance teams focus on decisions, audits and exception handling. The company has not disclosed customer counts or revenue.
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Image Credits: Kunal Chopra LinkedIn, Canva
