Why we invested in Cortea
In audit, the value of AI is obvious – but the path to adoption is not straightforward. There is no doubt that AI can make auditors faster and more productive, but the obstacle is trust: every number, disclosure, and judgement may later have to be defended to a partner, a client, or a regulator. A tool that cannot withstand that scrutiny is no use at all.
Cortea was built for exactly this problem, and that is why we invested.
The problem
Audit firms are under rising pressure, and a key part of the issue is people. Fewer are entering the profession, more are leaving it, and the work that needs doing keeps growing. The number of candidates taking the CPA exam in the US has dropped by 27% over the past decade, while around 75% of current CPAs are nearing retirement age. The teams that remain face mounting demands: regulatory scrutiny is rising, and firms cannot simply hire their way out of the gap.
AI is the obvious lever. But a generic model that produces plausible-looking answers is worse than useless in a context where work has to be reviewable, defensible, and able to withstand a regulator picking it apart line by line.
So the bar is high. Any tool that touches the audit has to fit how firms actually operate: alongside existing systems, under the auditor's control, with a clear trail back to the underlying evidence. Above all, it has to support the auditor's judgement rather than substitute for it, because accountability for the audit stays with the firm no matter which tool produced the finding.
What Cortea does
What impressed us was not simply that Cortea had built an AI solution for auditors. It was that they started by solving a critical point in the workflow where quality, risk, and partner confidence matter most: completion and review.
Cortea's Audit Quality Agents review audit reports, financial statements, disclosure notes, and workpapers before sign-off. They cross-check figures, disclosures, and supporting documentation to surface inconsistencies, missing information, Companies House filing discrepancies, and potential compliance issues, turning a process that took hours into one that takes minutes. Crucially, the agents prepare findings for an auditor to review rather than replacing the auditor's judgement, and they work with existing audit systems rather than asking firms to rip anything out. That is a harder product to build and a slower one to demo, but it is the approach that audit firms can actually put into a live engagement, and the one that holds up when a regulator asks how a conclusion was reached.
The early evidence is encouraging. Across the most recent audit season, Cortea's technology supported more than 4,000 audit reports, identifying issues across the files it reviewed and saving auditors several days of manual review per engagement. Numbers like that, delivered inside a live audit season rather than a pilot, are what moved this from an interesting idea to a company we wanted to back.
The team
Valentin, Philipp, and the team bring a rare blend of operational and technical expertise, honed at companies like Audibene, Finoa, N26, and KPMG. They have built Cortea in close collaboration with audit firms across the UK and Europe, and it shows in how deeply the product reflects audit methodology rather than an outsider's idea of it. One former CEO who worked closely with Valentin described him as someone who will do whatever it takes to master a domain, which is borne out by how quickly the team has absorbed the working methods of the firms they serve. In a market this demanding, that combination matters more than almost anything else.
Why now
AI is moving from experiment into live audit workflows quickly. We think the firms that win the next decade will be the ones that combine the efficiency of AI with the rigour and oversight the profession requires, and the firms that fall behind will be the ones that either waited too long or adopted AI carelessly. The thing to keep in view is that Cortea is not trying to remove the auditor's judgement. It is trying to make review faster, more consistent, and more defensible, which is exactly what a profession under this much strain needs. Cortea is building the AI quality layer that lets firms move fast without taking on that risk. Audit is just one part of the accounting and finance domain that is being rebuilt with AI, and this is a space that we’ll continue to lean into with deep conviction.
We are delighted to be backing the team alongside Dawn Capital, Cherry Ventures, and a world-class group of angels, including Larry Bradley, former Global Head of Audit at KPMG. We are excited to help them build the trusted AI layer for modern audit.
