Variance (formerly Intrinsic) builds agentic AI for risk and compliance operations, deploying AI investigators that autonomously execute the mission-critical workflows financial institutions and large enterprises rely on, including fraud investigation, KYC, KYB, AML, transaction monitoring and enforcement.
The platform is designed to handle the high-volume, repetitive investigative work that compliance and trust-and-safety teams face. Variance processes more than 70 million context signals per day and executes approximately 300,000 automated enforcement actions across its customers' environments, freeing human investigators to focus on the most complex cases.
Founded in 2023 by Karine Mellata and Michael Lin, who met working on Apple's fraud engineering and algorithmic risk team, the San Francisco company brings deep operator experience to the design of its agents.
Variance raised a $21.5 million Series A led by Ten Eleven Ventures, with participation from 645 Ventures, Y Combinator, Urban Innovation Fund and Okta Ventures, bringing total funding to $26 million. The capital will scale its agentic platform for financial institutions and Fortune 500 enterprises.