The Control Execution Layer for Enterprises: Auxilius raises €1.3M pre-seed led by HTGF

• Auxilius, a Munich-based company building AI-native Governance, Risk and Compliance, has closed a pre-seed round of around €1.3 million, led by HTGF, with participation from Techstars, and several industry-focused business angels.
• Manual controls can’t keep up with regulatory and operational changes, which is why compliance failures keep outpacing spending on Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC). Auxilius turns policies and control requirements into deterministic, executable code that runs continuously and adapts as rules change. The code itself is the evidence.
• The funding will be used to scale the engineering team and to build out Auxilius’ Control Intelligence knowledge graph, the layer that gives each control its organizational context, linking risks, controls, and decisions back to the business objective they are designed to protect

Auxilius.ai GmbH, an AI-native company automating GRC for enterprises, has closed a pre-seed round of around €1.3 million. The round is led by High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), joined by Techstars, and several industry-focused business angels. Auxilius converts company policies and control rules into deterministic code that assesses risk coverage automatically and executes controls continuously.

Auxilius closes the gap between policy and proof

Most enterprises share one persistent problem: policies are written, but traceable evidence of adherence is hard to generate. Today people close it by hand: auditors pull samples, second-line teams chase spreadsheets a quarter after the risk already hit, control owners screenshot evidence instead of receiving decision support. As a consequence, around 80% of enterprise controls are still executed manually. Auxilius turns policies, risk-and-control matrices and regulatory text into deterministic, executable code. The control runs on the full population of data rather than a sample, and when a rule changes, the code changes with it. Internal audit moves from once-an-audit sampling toward continuous assurance, internal control from periodic attestation toward continuous monitoring, and the business embeds control execution inside its own processes.

“We’re building a new model for assurance: continuous, auditable, and aligned with the decisions C-level teams have to make under regulatory pressure. The gap we close is between what’s mission-critical for the business and what the underlying data can truly support with auditable evidence. That’s when a control stops documenting compliance and starts informing the decision,” says Christian Hoppe, CEO & Co-Founder of Auxilius.

 “What convinced us very early on was Chris and James’ rare domain depth in GRC paired with enterprise-grade engineering and their big vision: making audit-ready evidence a byproduct of day-to-day operations, as regulatory and operational change accelerates. We’re excited to support Chris, James, and the team on this journey,” adds Hanna Sasse, Investment Manager at HTGF.

What happens next

Auxilius will use the funding to grow its engineering and domain team and build out the Control Intelligence knowledge graph, the layer that allows a control to be automated once, rolled out across many processes and kept current as regulations and business processes evolve. The company already supports its first paying enterprise customers including European banks and industrial groups, demonstrating faster time-to-value and expanding control coverage while reducing manual effort.

Auxilius was founded by Christian Hoppe, a former EY Equity Partner with 15 years of GRC and SaaS experience, and James Barnes, previously Software Architect at Sopra Steria CSS, with deep experience in enterprise AI, ERP, and cloud architecture.

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About Auxilius

Auxilius.ai GmbH, founded in late 2025 and based in Unterföhring near Munich, automates enterprise control activities by converting policies and control rules into deterministic, executable code. Its platform automates the design, execution and testing of enterprise controls for internal audit, internal control and operational teams. The company is led by co-founders Christian Hoppe (CEO) and James Barnes (CTO) and currently employs a team of four AI- and Tech-Engineers. More at www.auxilius.ai.