An artificial intelligence startup that automates background checks for banks, law firms, and universities is moving its top brass to Boston after pulling in $56 million in new funding. Xapien announced the investment round this week, saying the money will fund a build-out of its U.S. presence as the company relocates chief executive Chris Green and other leaders to Massachusetts.
The Series B round was led by growth equity firm Spectrum Equity, with participation from existing backer YFM Equity Partners, according to Voice of Alexandria. As reported by Axios, the raise pushes Xapien's total equity funding past $73 million, building on a £6 million seed round the company closed in 2023.
Revenue Growth That Outpaced a Physical Footprint
The funding arrives on the back of striking commercial momentum. Business Wire reports that Xapien's annual recurring revenue grew more than 350% over the two years preceding the Series B, even as the company sold into the American market without any local, in-country sales staff. Per the same account, Xapien's U.S. business reached 43% of total annual recurring revenue in 2025 before climbing to 50% this year, according to the seed report from Voice of Alexandria — a threshold reached before the executive leadership's move to Boston.
Xapien's platform is built to read the open web, corporate records, sanctions lists, and media coverage in any language, producing what the company describes as a fully sourced and auditable risk report in minutes, per Voice of Alexandria's reporting. The company says its clients report that 90% of onboarding cases can be fully automated using the tool, and it now counts roughly 350 clients and partners across 15 countries, including Dow Jones Risk & Compliance, law firm Greenberg Traurig, KPMG, and industrial giant ABB.
A Newer Product Aims at Continuous Monitoring
Beyond one-time background checks, Xapien is also pushing a newer offering called Xapien Live, currently in beta, which the company says provides a persistent view of counterparty risk rather than a single snapshot, enabling continuous risk surveillance instead of periodic reviews. That shift toward always-on monitoring addresses a gap that Business Wire's coverage quantifies starkly: only 30% of surveyed organizations say they have the internal staff bandwidth to complete thorough due diligence reviews on even half of their active third-party relationships.
Xapien chief executive Chris Green, who joined the company in 2022, framed the problem in blunt terms. “Third-party due diligence has remained stubbornly manual for twenty years,” Green said, according to Voice of Alexandria's report on the funding round. Joel Lange, EVP and general manager of risk and enterprise at Dow Jones, echoed that view, saying Xapien helps organizations conduct rigorous due diligence more efficiently and make faster, smarter risk-based decisions, per the same outlet.
From a BAE Systems Offshoot to a Category Leader
Xapien's origins trace to 2018, when it was founded under the name Digital Insight Technologies by Dan Secretan and Shaun O'Mahony, according to Xapien's own corporate disclosures. The company entered the Founders Factory accelerator in 2019, rebranded as Xapien in 2021, and launched commercially after Green came aboard as CEO in 2022. All three executives previously worked in the financial crime and national security divisions of defense contractor BAE Systems, per Voice of Alexandria and Xapien's company background. Dartmouth College became the company's first U.S. client in 2022, and Dow Jones Risk & Compliance adopted the platform in 2024 to power its automated background search product, Integrity Check, according to Xapien's corporate materials.
Independent industry evaluators have taken notice. Risk technology research firm Chartis Research named Xapien a Category Leader in Know Your Customer Data & Solutions in 2024 and selected the company as a Gold Market Disruptor in its 2026 Financial Crime and Compliance50 report. Lead investor Spectrum Equity brings its own track record to the deal, having previously backed financial crime software developer Verafin, which Nasdaq acquired for $2.75 billion in 2021, as well as risk intelligence provider World-Check, according to Spectrum Equity. The firm says it has invested in risk and compliance technology for more than two decades.
Regulatory Currents Reshaping the Compliance Market
The funding round lands amid a broader realignment of global compliance rules that could shape demand for automated screening tools. In August 2026, the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network published a final rule permanently eliminating beneficial ownership reporting under the Corporate Transparency Act for domestic U.S. companies and individuals, according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The rollback narrowed mandatory government registry reporting largely to registered foreign entities.
At the same time, the European Union's Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, in force since July 2024 with implementation timelines pushed toward 2029, exposes large EU and non-EU corporations to administrative fines of up to 3% of net global turnover for failing to conduct human rights and environmental due diligence across their supply chains, per the European Commission. Those requirements extend beyond direct commercial vendors to cover upstream and downstream supply chain relationships, adding pressure on multinational firms to adopt automated third-party surveillance.
Xapien says its platform is built for highly regulated environments and is meant to give clients full counterparty coverage and risk visibility as it works to establish dynamic due diligence as the new standard for managing third-party risk, according to Voice of Alexandria's report. As its executive team heads to Boston and Xapien's media contact listed as Jessica Denny, the company is betting that American demand — already reflected in U.S. revenue reaching 50% — will grow as its leadership works from inside the market it is chasing.
