Osano, a risk and compliance startup, raises $5M in Series A

Risk and compliance startup Osano, which earlier this year debuted on the Battlefield stage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF, has raised $5.4 million in its Series A round.

The company told TechCrunch that the round was led by LiveOak Venture Partners and Next Coast Ventures, both of which invested in the company’s seed round. Its Series A fundraise also included participation from several individual investors, putting Osano’s total amount raised to date at $8.4 million.

The Austin, Texas-based startup bills itself as a privacy platform that helps businesses understand and address their compliance with state and international privacy laws, like Europe’s GDPR and California’s new statewide privacy law, set to take effect on January 1. One of the company’s flagship features is providing cookie and consent management on customer websites, allowing users to choose their privacy settings in their own language.

To date, the turnkey platform is used by more than 750,000 companies — including some Fortune 500 companies — to secure over 3.5 million websites.

Osano plans to use the new funds to further invest in research and development, marketing and hiring to meet “growing demand” for its service, the company said.

“We are proud to continue into the next round with our original investors,” said Arlo Gilbert, Osano’s co-founder and chief executive. “Heading into 2020, we are moving quickly to add talent to our growing team and to deepen Osano’s position as a leading data privacy platform.”

“There is a definitive need to bring transparency to the process of how companies deal with privacy, and we are very excited about taking on this challenge to empower both individuals and organizations,” said Gilbert.

Osano makes business risk and compliance (somewhat) sexy again