General Catalyst leads $11M seed into Complir’s AI retail compliance platform

Complir has closed an oversubscribed $11 million seed round, with General Catalyst leading the deal and several angel investors and industry funds joining in. The Copenhagen startup had already raised a $2 million pre-seed round nine months earlier, and its total funding now sits at roughly $13 million in about a year.

The speed is part of the story. Gustav Bang, Complir’s co-founder and CEO, said the fundraising process took two weeks and that the round was oversubscribed within three days. General Catalyst made its decision after three meetings and a phone call with the founders, a process Bang compared to hiring rather than the usual marathon of checks. Samuel Beyer, the firm’s partner for early-stage work in Europe, led the investment.

Complir was founded in Copenhagen in 2024 by Bang, Tine Kühnel and Marc Kaa Brejner. The company has grown from two founders to 18 employees, with three engineers joining before this round. The new money is going 70% to go-to-market work and 30% to engineering, and the company plans to open a US office in New York within six months.

The product sits in a messy, very physical problem: retail compliance. Complir’s software takes product data, classifies items with AI, and tells retailers what rules apply before goods reach the shelf. Bang says customers such as Flying Tiger, Matas Group, Konges Sløjd and Coop Trading use the system to avoid the email back-and-forth that still bogs down compliance teams. The platform is aimed at products moving through the European Union, where even something as simple as a toy robot can trigger rules on safety, packaging waste, batteries, radio equipment and GDPR.

Bang says Complir is not trying to be a narrow tool for one category. He argues that a retailer handling toys, textiles, cosmetics and electronics needs a system built for complexity from the start. And he’s not shy about the market around it: physical goods make up 25% of EU GDP, and the compliance software market was worth $35.8 billion in 2025.