BREAKING: Nat Friedman Leads $15M Seed in AIUC
Launching Out of Stealth: Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company
Rune Kvist, Founder &CEO of the Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company (AIUC), joins Sourcery to announce coming out of stealth with a $15M seed round led by Nat Friedman (NFDG). This round includes participation from Emergence, Terrain, Ben Mann (Anthropic co-founder), former CISOs of Google Cloud & MongoDB, and other top AI operators.
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In this conversation we break down how his team is building the confidence infrastructure for AI adoption — and why every AI agent will soon need to be certified and insured.
Rune was the first product & GTM hire at Anthropic, and now he’s building the “confidence infrastructure” for the AGI era — combining standards (AIUC-1), audits, and insurance to de-risk AI deployments.
Key Takeaways
CEO Rune Kvist: Anthropic’s first product & GTM hire
AIUC is building insurance, standards, & audits for AI agents
Enterprises won’t adopt AI without trust & accountability
AI agent failures — like hallucinations or leaks — are inevitable
AIUC-1 is a fast-updating standard to certify agents (SOC 2 for AI)
Every AI agent will need certification & insurance
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Highlights
(00:00) Launching AIUC: $15M Seed Led by Nat Friedman
(01:49) What AIUC Does: Insurance, Standards, and Audits for AI Agents
(04:20) History Repeats: How Insurance Enabled Innovation (Franklin, UL, Cars)
(08:14) The AI Divide: OpenAI vs Anthropic vs SSI
(10:39) Confidence Infrastructure: Helping Enterprises Trust AI
(14:13) How AIUC Tests Agents & Updates Standards Frequently
(17:03) Underwriting AI: Modeling Risk When Agents Go Rogue
(21:40) From AGI to Superintelligence: What Comes Next?
(28:36) Why AI Regulation Won’t Be Federal This Year
(34:36) What Is a Kill Switch — And Do We Need One?
(39:28): One Dominant Standard for AI Insurance
(45:41) What Enterprise AI Will Look Like in 3–5 Years
Building the Confidence Layer for AI Agents
How AIUC is Creating Insurance, Standards, and Audits for the Superintelligence Era
Artificial intelligence has progressed faster than most expected. But as powerful agents enter the enterprise, a key question emerges: Can we trust them? In this conversation, AIUC CEO Rune Kvist — formerly the first product hire at Anthropic — explains how his company is building the confidence infrastructure needed to deploy frontier AI.
Why AI Agents Need a Trust Layer
The foundation of AIUC is simple: enterprise buyers are hesitant to deploy powerful agents without knowing how they behave — or what happens when they fail.
Rune points out that AI adoption is stalling not because of model performance, but because of trust gaps. AIUC steps in to fill that void with independent testing, certification, and insurance.
Introducing AIUC-1 — “SOC 2 for AI Agents”
At the core of AIUC’s offering is a new enterprise-grade certification standard: AIUC-1. It’s modeled after security frameworks like SOC 2, but built specifically for autonomous AI behavior.
This is a living framework — AIUC updates the standard every 90 days to keep up with the evolving capabilities (and risks) of frontier models.
Why Insurance Is the Missing Piece
Beyond testing and certification, AIUC takes it a step further: they underwrite AI risk. If an agent causes financial or operational damage, AIUC’s policies help cover the fallout.
This moves AIUC beyond theory — and into a practical solution enterprises can rely on. Safer agents get better terms. Risky ones get flagged or denied.
Markets Will Move Faster Than Governments
Rune doesn’t believe regulation is coming fast enough. That’s why he’s building a private market solution modeled after historical breakthroughs — like the creation of fire insurance or UL Labs.
In a world racing toward AGI, AIUC believes confidence — not just capability — will determine who wins.
Do We Need a Kill Switch?
One of the most frequent requests from enterprise customers isn’t technical — it’s operational. They want a way to stop the agent immediately if it starts acting unexpectedly. Kvist says the demand for a “kill switch” reflects a deeper anxiety: companies want to feel in control, especially when deploying systems that can take independent action.
AIUC evaluates whether agents can be paused, sandboxed, or shut down as part of its audit process. Control is no longer a nice-to-have — it’s a requirement for adoption.
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