CERTO raises $4 million to automate one of beautytech’s biggest bottlenecks
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Regulatory compliance is rarely viewed as a strategic technology issue. Yet within beauty and consumer goods groups, it has become one of the main friction points in the product launch chain. Every new formula, packaging design or marketing claim must now navigate an increasingly unstable global regulatory maze. It is precisely this segment, still largely managed through spreadsheets, PDFs and manual checks, where Certo intends to build its trajectory.
The French startup has announced a $4 million seed round led by Daphni, with participation from Entrepreneurs First, Motier Ventures and Transpose Platform.
Founded by Bastien Deliège-Coste and Jean Duquenne, the company develops an AI-powered regulatory compliance platform for the beauty and consumer goods industries. Its objective is to automate regulatory checks related to ingredients, formulations, marketing claims, packaging and access to international markets.
International groups are now facing continuous regulatory inflation. New European regulations on microplastics, packaging waste and allergens are adding further layers of complexity to compliance chains already under pressure. Some companies operate simultaneously across more than 150 markets, each with its own rules governing authorized ingredients, formulations and marketing claims.
In this environment, regulatory departments are increasingly becoming a major operational bottleneck. Every validation delay can slow down a product launch, generate reformulation costs or block access to certain markets. Yet many of the tools still in use remain rooted in outdated document-based workflows.
“Regulatory reviews are the critical path of every product launch, but the process hasn’t changed in decades,” said Bastien Deliège-Coste, CEO and co-founder of Certo.
The company says it has built a proprietary regulatory infrastructure continuously updated across the European Union, the United States, China, Japan, South Korea and several Latin American markets. Layered on top of this database are several specialized AI agents capable of analyzing a product against applicable regulations, internal company standards and retailer-imposed constraints.
After the rise of general-purpose copilots, a new generation of AI startups is now attempting to establish itself in highly constrained vertical professions where traceability and auditability have become essential. In these regulated environments, value does not reside solely in the AI model itself, but in the quality of proprietary databases, document structuring and the ability to generate verifiable reasoning.
The startup says it has already deployed its platform with international beauty groups, distributors and regulated companies across Europe and the United States. “We didn’t start by building a product and then looking for customers,” explained Jean Duquenne, CTO and co-founder. “We started with the workflows of regulatory teams.”
The funds raised will allow Certo to strengthen its engineering and regulatory teams, expand its multi-market coverage and accelerate its commercial development across Europe and the United States.
