Kalyani Ramadurgam and Ashi Agrawal Automate Regulatory Compliance
By James Moreau | 27 Apr, 2026

The Kobalt Labs founders leverage LLMs to transform manual regulatory reviews into instant automated insights.

Kalyani Ramadurgam and Ashi Agrawal are the founders of Kobalt Labs, an AI-powered compliance platform navigating the high-stakes regulatory landscape of fintech.

The New York-based startup has secured $12.7 million in funding to expand its third-party risk management and automation technology.  Founded in 2023, Kobalt Labs leverages large language models to automate the tedious manual review processes that often stall financial innovation, including SOC 2 and security report analysis, regulatory gap mapping, and UDAAP marketing reviews.

Kobalt’s platform serves as an “automated compliance officer,” allowing teams at institutions like Chime and Bilt to identify security gaps and regulatory requirements instantly. 

The startup’s rapid execution and innovative technology earned Ramadurgam and Agrawal a spot on the 2026 Forbes 30 Under 30 list.

Both founders of Indian descent share a deep technical pedigree. Ramadurgam, who serves as the company’s CEO, was a software engineer for Zenysis Technologies for two years before turning to entrepreneurship.  She also developed financial security products at Apple designed to safeguard Apple Pay transactions.  Agrawal, Kobalt’s CTO, was a software engineer at the fintech giant Affirm for four years.  Both founders are 2019 computer science graduates of Stanford University.  Ramadurgam also holds a CS master’s with a concentration in AI.

Their shared technical foundation and passion for transforming legacy infrastructure ultimately led them to join the Summer 2023 cohort of Y Combinator to scale their vision.