Calibre, an AI infrastructure startup for the testing, inspection and certification industry, has raised £2.5 million in a pre-seed round led by Vicus Ventures and CIV, with participation from I2BF, 9 Yards Capital, Jigeum, and angels including Nikesh Arora. The startup is building AI agents and AuditorOS, a product that helps auditors review documentation, write reports and cross-reference standards.
The testing, inspection and certification industry underpins certifications such as ISO standards, regulatory approvals and safety marks, which are needed before products and services can enter regulated markets, sell to governments or reach major retailers. Calibre says certification can take 3–6 months, with auditors spending much of their time analysing documents and writing reports rather than making expert judgement calls.
For enterprise TIC bodies, Calibre deploys bespoke AI agents into existing systems, built around each organisation’s standards, workflows and judgement patterns. AuditorOS is built for independent auditors and inspectors, and is already in use with early customers ahead of a public launch in June.
The TIC industry is a $200bn+ market and demand for verification is expected to grow as AI is embedded into areas such as self-driving cars, automated financial systems and autonomous manufacturing lines, while the auditor workforce faces retirements and fewer new entrants.
Gautham and Steve met at university and have been building together for seven years. At Palantir, they spent three years embedded inside customer operations across 20+ regulated industries. Gautham became a direct report to CTO Shyam Sankar and ran over 100+ AI bootcamp using Palantir’s AIP platform, while Steve led some of Palantir’s largest European engagements, building agentic systems that replaced manual workflows at scale.
TIC is a fragmented, highly specialised industry where generic AI doesn’t work. You need founders who’ve actually deployed AI inside regulated environments, and Gautham and Steve are among the very few who have, at serious scale. We’re lucky to be backing them.
