Rulebase: The AI Coworker for Fintech, Backed by Y Combinator
▼ Summary
– Rulebase is a startup that automates back-office financial tasks like compliance and quality assurance using AI, rather than focusing on flashy interfaces.
– The company was founded by Nigerian engineers Gideon Ebose and Chidi Williams and recently raised $2.1 million in pre-seed funding.
– Its AI agent integrates with tools like Zendesk and Slack to evaluate customer interactions, flag risks, and manage workflows while maintaining human oversight.
– Rulebase currently serves clients including Rho and a Fortune 50 financial institution, reducing costs by up to 70% and escalations by 30% in some cases.
– The startup targets financial services due to the need for precision and domain expertise, with plans to expand into areas like fraud investigation and adjacent verticals like insurance.
Rulebase, a Y Combinator-backed startup, is positioning itself as a transformative force in financial technology by targeting the often overlooked but critical area of back-office automation. Rather than chasing flashy consumer-facing applications, the company focuses on streamlining compliance, dispute resolution, and quality assurance, processes that traditionally demand significant manual effort and resources within financial institutions.
Founded by Gideon Ebose and Chidi Williams, two Nigerian engineers who connected in London, Rulebase recently secured $2.1 million in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Bowery Capital, with contributions from Y Combinator, Commerce Ventures, Transpose Platform VC, and several angel investors. Both founders bring substantial industry experience: Ebose previously served as a product lead at Microsoft, while Williams worked as a backend engineer at Goldman Sachs.
The core of Rulebase’s offering is an AI-powered agent called “Coworker,” which integrates with widely used platforms like Zendesk, Jira, and Slack. This tool evaluates customer interactions in real time, identifies regulatory risks, and initiates appropriate follow-up actions, all while preserving essential human oversight. According to Williams, the system collaborates seamlessly with human teams to manage entire dispute lifecycles, reducing errors and ensuring ongoing compliance.
Already, Rulebase is making tangible impacts for clients such as U.S. business banking platform Rho and a Fortune 50 financial institution that remains unnamed. By automating quality assurance checks that were previously done manually, often covering only 3–5% of interactions, Rulebase now reviews 100% of support engagements. This shift has led to cost reductions of up to 70% and a 30% decrease in escalations for some users.
The company’s origin stems from the founders’ firsthand observations of operational inefficiencies in financial services, both at large institutions and smaller enterprises. Before Rulebase, Ebose and Williams developed several products together, including an AI-driven customer feedback tool. Their current venture zeroes in on workflows initiated by customer interactions, starting with quality assurance and expanding into compliance and dispute management.
Looking ahead, Rulebase plans to use its recent funding to enhance its engineering capabilities and introduce new functionalities such as fraud investigation, audit preparation, and regulatory reporting. The company’s focused approach on financial services is intentional; mastering complex, domain-specific requirements, like MasterCard regulations or CFPB timelines, serves as a competitive advantage.
While the initial market includes business banks, neobanks, and card issuers across Africa, Europe, and the U.S., future expansion into adjacent sectors like insurance is under consideration. Revenue has been growing rapidly, with double-digit month-over-month increases since the company joined Y Combinator’s Fall 2024 cohort. Rulebase operates on a usage-based pricing model, charging clients per interaction reviewed or workflow automated.
As African founders breaking into the global AI scene, Ebose and Williams emphasize the importance of thinking big from the outset. They advise aspiring entrepreneurs to avoid limiting their vision to narrow verticals or regional markets. In Williams’ words, “With AI, it feels obvious that you have to go after something massive.” His prior experience building Buzz, an open-source speech-to-text tool with over 300,000 downloads, underscores the value of ambition and technical execution.
(Source: TechCrunch)
