Certo, an AI startup based in Paris, has raised $4 million in seed funding led by Daphni, with participation from Entrepreneurs First, Motier Ventures, and Transpose Platform. The company, founded by Bastien Deliège-Coste and Jean Duquenne, is developing a compliance system to help consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, including beauty brands, navigate the growing complexity of international regulations.
Consumer goods companies selling internationally face regulations in up to 150 countries, each with its own rules for ingredients, formulas, marketing claims, labelling, and packaging. Most regulatory teams still rely on manual cross-checks, scattered spreadsheets, and disconnected document systems.
“A lot of very smart people are doing annual and repetitive work. We built Certo because we saw firsthand that regulatory teams were buried under growing requirements with no tools designed for their actual workflows,” Deliège-Coste said.
Certo’s platform covers the full compliance process with five modules: raw material and ingredient approval, formula compliance, claims verification, artwork and labelling checks, and market entry documentation. Each module is built for a specific compliance task, rather than using general-purpose AI models on regulatory text.
“A lot of our competitors are relying on OpenAI or Anthropic models, so they cannot audit the database. The traceability of every finding on the platform is what makes it usable in a regulated environment,” Deliège-Coste added.
Certo differentiates itself through three key factors: its proprietary database, in-house regulatory expertise, and an enterprise-focused approach that customises workflows for each client rather than offering a self-serve tool. Deliège-Coste sees managed services as the future of the industry.
The company’s six-person team includes members from France, Switzerland, and the US. Deliège-Coste noted that regulatory affairs in personal care and home care are predominantly female across the industry, so he expects the team’s makeup to change as they hire more regulatory experts.
“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,” said Briac Lescure and Jonas Simonin, partners at Daphni.
Certo plans to use the $4 million for three main goals: hiring regulatory experts to grow its database and managed services, accelerating commercial growth in the US (where it already has customers and sees the biggest opportunity), and expanding beyond personal care and food supplements into food and beverage, where product development is underway.
The company has not disclosed customer names or current ARR, but has set internal goals of $500,000 in ARR by the end of 2025 and $2 million by 2027.
Source: Read the original report | Published: May 26, 2026