Berlin-based Cortea raises €12 million seed round to build AI quality layer for audit firms

Cortea, a Berlin-based startup building the AI quality layer for audit firms, has raised €12 million in a Seed funding round and announced the launch of its first Audit Quality Agents. The agents are designed to help firms improve audit quality while increasing capacity across the audit process.

The round was led by Dawn Capital, with participation from Cherry Ventures, Mosaic Ventures, and angel investors including Larry Bradley, former Global Head of Audit at KPMG. According to Cortea, audit firms are facing growing pressure to improve audit quality while managing capacity constraints, heightened regulatory scrutiny, and increasingly complex reporting requirements. AI is rapidly moving from experimentation into real audit workflows. The company notes that the question is no longer whether AI can boost efficiency, but rather how to implement it without sacrificing quality, consistency, and professional judgment.

Cortea's Audit Quality Agents were developed in collaboration with leading audit firms in the UK and Europe. They review audit reports, financial statements, disclosure notes, and workpapers before sign-off. The agents cross-check figures, disclosures, and supporting documentation to identify inconsistencies, missing information, Companies House filing discrepancies, and potential compliance issues in minutes rather than hours. During the most recent audit season, the technology helped deliver more than 4,000 audit reports, identifying issues in every reviewed file and saving auditors several days of manual review per engagement.

Valentin Neumann, co-founder and CEO of Cortea, said: "The audit profession is about to undergo one of the biggest shifts in its history. AI will transform how audits are executed, but it will also raise the bar for quality, consistency, and professional oversight." Larry Bradley, now an investor, commented: "In audit and assurance, trust is everything."

With the fresh capital, the company will support the development of additional audit agents, deeper integrations with leading audit platforms, and expansion across the UK, Germany, and the United States.