Former KPMG chief joins £10m funding round for AI-powered audit challenger

A Berlin-based audit AI firm has raised over £10m in a fundraising round, including from Dawn Capital, to expand into the UK market as a solution to the skilled labour shortage in the audit industry.

Cortea, founded in 2024 by Valentin Neumann and Philipp Hovelmann, pitches itself as an answer for firms under pressure to improve audit quality while managing capacity constraints, tighter review expectations, and more complex reporting requirements.

Speaking to City PM, co-founder Neumann explained: “AI is the solution to the skilled labour shortage, but the biggest restriction is quality and liability…… because if auditors use AI, it needs to be correct, at least it needs to be traceable…. and what we do is develop a system.”

While the Big Four have cut graduate entry-level roles due to AI and changing market dynamics, mid-tier and smaller firms are struggling with intense skills shortages.

The tech firm is launching its first ‘Audit Quality Agents’, developed in close collaboration with audit firms, to review audit reports, disclosure notes and financial statements before sign-off, catching inconsistencies, missing information and potential errors that would otherwise be filed at Companies House.

The AI tool targets mid-sized audit firms but is designed to plug into the Big Four, the next six, and boutiques as well.

Last year, the AI firm raised a total of €3.1m (£2.6m) in funding, with backers including venture capital firm Cherry Ventures and Google DeepMind. In its latest funding round, with a vision to expand into the UK, investment giant Dawn Capital and angel investors, including Larry Bradley, the former global head of audit at KPMG, finalised €12m (£10.3m) in investment.

Dan Chaplin, partner at Dawn Capital, told City PM, “Now is the time to change the operating model for audit delivery. The team at Cortea have been determined to build a solution that works with auditors and for auditors. We believe they will be at the forefront of this transformation in the UK and globally, helping their partners not only to meet demand and scale capacity, but to improve quality at every step. We are delighted to be backing them.”

Cortea explicitly positions itself as a layer above Anthropic and OpenAI, and not as a rival foundation model.

In the wake of UK audit failures and Financial Reporting Council (FRC) pressure, Cortea’s line is that even if you use Anthropic, you still face liability and quality-assurance gaps.

Neumann explained, “Any auditor who just uses Anthropic, they start where we started 12 months ago….okay, AI gives you good results, but the problem is everything looks great when you look at AI results, which is not great for auditors because they need specific ways to test it [which] we have figured out how to deal with that problem.”