Deutsche Bank is betting on Norwegian provider of automated governance solutions for software delivery Kosli as it seeks to modernise software delivery governance.

The bank co-led a series A funding round worth $10 million through Deutsche Bank Corporate Venture Capital (CVC), a cross-divisional arm that seeks to support start-ups and entrepreneurs.

Kosli, which launched on Friday, addresses several software delivery compliance challenges for financial institutions and other highly regulated industries through tools including automated controls and audit, customer security protections, engineering-focused controls, and change management automation.

The platform aims to provide real-time visibility and control over software delivery processes, ensuring that all changes meet regulatory requirements while maintaining the agility required in a more digitally focused financial era.

The company said it will use the funding to accelerate the growth of its team in all departments and invest heavily in new technology to expand its client offering.

Commenting on the investment round’s results, Martin Reeves, engineering platforms and practice lead at Deutsche Bank's technology, data and innovation division said Kosli addresses the specific needs of software development teams operating in highly regulated industries.

“We are delighted to partner and collaborate with Kosli to drive our vision of a highly efficient, transparent, and secure software development lifecycle that empowers our engineers to focus on developing solutions for the bank’s clients,” he added.

In a statement, Kosli explained how governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) workflows are lagging behind the significant cloud and DevOps transformations in software development, creating a bottleneck that delays changes to production while increasing cyber threats risks.

It cited a 2024 McKinsey survey which found that 41 per cent of global financial institutions find metrics and reporting capabilities to be key weakness in their overall infrastructure.

Mike Long, chief executive, Kosli, said: “Right now, teams in regulated industries are basing control and audit decisions on information that is written into text boxes. It destroys software delivery performance with manual work and piles up errors and risks that are found retrospectively in audits or system failures. We want to transform this broken process with controls engineering so that teams can deliver compliant, secure changes quickly at scale.”

The funding round saw developer-first start-up-focused investor Heavybit co-leading the funding round alongside Deutsche Bnak.

Other supporters included investors Defined Capital and Transpose Platform, and a number of angel investors.

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