As co-founders of Surveill, a compliance intelligence startup in the financial services industry, Aydin Bonabi, his wife Asli Bonabi, and Ignacio Ortega deeply believe in human-led AI. They have built AI agents that act like compliance analysts that are hyper trained to provide insight and support to compliance officers.
This team is on a mission to refine compliance as a driver of productivity and performance. Surveill’s AI platform helps multinational financial institutions and regulated financial services firms achieve measurable efficiency and cost gains in compliance operations. Surveill clients report up to savings in time and costs of as much as 60% cost reduction, alongside improved risk visibility and regulatory oversight.
As compliance teams face growing pressure to do more with less, they often lack the unified data needed to make informed decisions, says Asli Bonabi, Suveill’s CTO.
“Surveill bridges that gap. Our specialized AI agents are powered by the latest compliance trends and regulatory data across industries, jurisdictions, and regulators, giving teams the intelligence they need to act confidently and with greater oversight,” she continued. “Our technology is designed to help organizations operate at scale, with stronger governance, lower costs, and absolute trust in their data — transforming compliance from a cost center into a strategic advantage.”
Surveill, based in Coral Gables, has just raised $1 million in venture capital, led by Istanbul-based Simya VC, a subsidiary of 212 VC, and including angel investors. The funding will be used to advance platform intelligence and automation in order to deliver faster, deeper insights to clients. “While we initially wanted to bootstrap, we quickly learned that in order to better service our existing clients we needed to raise money,” Aydin Bonabi says.
Aydin Bonabi returned to Miami, after about six years in New York City in regulatory law, including working at Rabobank’s investment division, a tier one bank, as a managing director. The Stetson law and FIU business graduate has had a longtime interest in startups, having founded a Miami legal tech startup a decade ago. Asli Bonabi, an MIT graduate, previously worked at Microsoft, Uber Eats and an AI startup. Ignacio Ortega, also an MIT grad, previously worked at Accenture and at OpenStore. The core team also includes two other engineers.
In building Surveill, the co-founders talked to hundreds of compliance officers and they kept hearning the same thing: They are worried about hallucinations and the lack of explainability and consistency in AI outputs, says Aydin Bonabi. “We spent countless of resources and energy in perfecting predictable outcomes, and this is important because just like any system it employs, the firm has a supervisory obligation over that system.”
This year, the young startup began booking revenue. “Instead of focusing on growth, we’ve been focusing on product — listening to our existing clients to ensure they love Surveill. But even with that … our pipeline is strong, and we expect to reach at least $500k ARR at the end of this year,” Bonabi says.
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