Delve, a compliance startup supported by Y Combinator and accused of creating fake certifications for its clients, has removed the “book a demo” function from its website.
The controversy, highlighted in a Substack post by an anonymous source, “DeepDelver,” reportedly caused Insight Partners to delete an article about its $32 million investment in Delve. DeepDelver, claiming to be a former client, accused Delve, valued at $300 million at its last funding round, of falsifying compliance data.
The original Insight Partners article, written by managing directors Teddie Wardi and Praveen Akkiraju, titled “Scaling AI-native compliance: How Delve is saving companies time and money on compliance busywork,” is still accessible here via the Wayback Machine.
Delve’s founders Karun Kaushik and Selin Kocalar, along with Insight Partners, have not commented on the matter to TechCrunch.
Delve’s website claims to reduce “hundreds of hours” of compliance work for customers like Microsoft, Chase, PayPal, American Express, and Perplexity, though it’s unclear how many still use the platform.
Founded in 2023, Delve uses AI to automate acquiring certifications like SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR.
DeepDelver claimed in their post that Delve “fabricated evidence of board meetings, tests, and processes,” pressuring clients into using fake evidence or doing manual work.
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The post also accuses Delve’s platform of self-verifying reports instead of independent auditing.
Delve responded, stating it doesn’t issue compliance reports but is an “automation platform” that provides compliance information to auditors.
The company said its clients “can choose auditors independently or from Delve’s network of accredited audit firms,” with those auditors being “established firms used broadly in the industry.”
Regarding the accusation of “fake evidence,” Delve argued it offers “templates to assist teams in documenting processes as required by compliance,” similar to other platforms.
Despite denying the allegations, the removal of its demo feature and Insight Partners’ article deletion indicate the startup is trying to manage the situation, with possible investor distancing.