Back in 2023, two tech veterans decided compliance didn't have to be stuck in the stone age. Kalyani Ramadurgam teamed up with Ashi Agrawal—who'd spent years building software at Affirm—to launch Kobalt Labs. Their pitch? Stop drowning compliance teams in paperwork.

What Kobalt actually does is pretty clever: their AI engines tear through massive document piles, hunting for red flags when banks evaluate potential partners. Think of it as giving compliance officers X-ray vision—spotting risks that'd normally take weeks to uncover. The system's trained to catch what matters: whether a business partner's actually following regulations, or just pretending to.

It's that intersection where machine learning meets old-school due diligence. Banks get faster answers. Compliance folks get their weekends back. And risky partnerships get flagged before they become problems.