A New Approach to Auditing with Artificial Intelligence

Audrey AI, a Dublin-based startup, has announced it secured $1.8 million in pre-seed funding. The company is dedicated to developing artificial intelligence solutions specifically designed for financial auditors. The investment round was led by Sure Valley Ventures (SVV) and Delta Partners, with participation from Enterprise Ireland, Donnchadh Casey (former CEO of Calypso), Conor Jones (former Chief Business Officer at Wayflyer), and several former Big Four auditors.

The financial auditing sector remains highly manual today. Auditors spend a significant portion of their time on spreadsheets and evidence collection, tasks where general-purpose AI tools have often struggled to provide effective solutions. Audrey AI aims to bridge this gap by offering a platform designed to enhance the efficiency and quality of auditing work.

Audrey AI's Agentic Platform

Founded in 2025 by Ryan Loughran and David Burke, Audrey AI has developed an agentic AI platform tailored for the entire audit process. This solution automates key workflows such as intelligent data requests, evidence gathering, transaction testing, and automated review. The goal is to orchestrate these tasks end-to-end, enabling auditors to focus on professional judgment and client relationships rather than repetitive administrative processes. The platform is designed to adapt to each firm’s methodology, improving its effectiveness over time as it learns from continued use.

For companies operating in highly regulated sectors like finance, the choice of deployment infrastructure for specialized AI solutions such as Audrey AI's is crucial. Managing Large Language Models (LLM) and agentic AI systems demands significant computational resources, often with stringent VRAM and throughput requirements for inference. The decision between a cloud deployment and a self-hosted or bare metal on-premise architecture depends on factors like data sovereignty, compliance regulations, and the long-term Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

Impact and Implications for the Industry

Audrey AI's approach promises to elevate audit quality standards, not just speed. Ryan Loughran, co-founder of the company, emphasized that the goal is to “build AI that understands auditing deeply enough to raise the bar on quality, not just speed, freeing auditors to focus on the judgment and oversight that matters most.”

The platform has already been successfully piloted with leading audit firms, including some among the top ten and top twenty globally. These tests demonstrated significant efficiency gains, with over 85% time savings in client data collection, validation, and tests of detail, alongside measurable improvements in audit quality. For companies handling sensitive financial data, the ability to maintain direct control over AI infrastructure, perhaps in air-gapped environments or with strict data residency policies, becomes a distinguishing factor in evaluating solutions like that offered by Audrey AI.

Future Prospects and Growth

The newly secured funds will be used to expand Audrey AI’s engineering and audit specialist teams. This investment will support the company's growth and the scaling of its deployments with audit firms across Ireland, the UK, and additional international markets.

The adoption of specialized AI solutions in the financial sector raises important questions regarding scalability and resource management. For CTOs and infrastructure architects, evaluating these platforms involves a thorough analysis of hardware requirements, integration capabilities with existing stacks, and the flexibility offered for future expansions. An AI system's ability to learn and adapt over time, as promised by Audrey AI, is a key factor for TCO and return on investment, especially in contexts where customization and data security are paramount.