Formalize, a compliance software company experiencing growth in Italy and Europe, announces the closing of a €30 million Series B round, co-led by German venture capital firm Acton Capital and BlackFin Tech, the venture arm of France’s BlackFin Capital Partners, with participation from the UK’s West Hill Capital and Canada’s CIBC Innovation Banking. The capital raised will be used to consolidate Formalize’s position as the leading European platform for governance, risk management and compliance (GRC) activities and to expand its presence in key markets such as the DACH region and France, with the opening of new offices and the growth of local teams.
This round, which follows the 2024 round led by BlackFin Tech, brings the total capital raised to €50 million.
Across Europe, businesses and SMEs are facing an increasingly complex regulatory landscape, where regulation and risk management go hand in hand. New requirements for data protection, cybersecurity and reporting, such as GDPR, NIS2, DORA and ISO 27001, reflect a change in the way organisations are required to manage information security and cyber resilience. Formalize responds to this challenge with a single platform that automates compliance workflows, consolidates requirements into a single environment and helps companies anticipate regulatory changes.
Founded by Magnus Boye, Kristoffer Abell and Jakob Lilholm (pictured) in 2021 in Aarhus, Denmark, Formalize develops SaaS solutions for corporate compliance management. It offers an integrated platform to automate and simplify the management of regulatory compliance processes, covering areas such as GDPR, ISO 27001, and whistleblowing. Since its inception, and thanks to the momentum of its Series A round in 2024, Formalize has become a solution used by over 8,000 enterprises and SMEs and more than 850 consulting firms and law firms. It has offices in Copenhagen, Aarhus, Madrid, and Milan, where it employs over 160 people. In Italy, it opened a branch in Milan in 2024, despite already being present on the Italian market with an operational team from Denmark, and since then has almost tripled its revenues, expanded its customer base by more than two-thirds and doubled its ecosystem of partners, such as law firms and consulting firms. In Italy, Formalize’s solutions are used by over 1,200 companies and SMEs, such as La Feltrinelli, Ibl Banca, Cassa Lombarda, the Municipality of Novara and Burger King.
Compliance is no longer optional: it has become essential for doing business. At Formalise, we are building a future in which automation and AI simplify governance, risk and compliance activities for European SMEs without ever compromising on security and local expertise, which are our hallmarks. With our platform, SMEs can manage regulations, automate workflows and adapt to new rules as they emerge. Our commitment is to continue investing in workflow automation, platform flexibility and responsible AI that supports, rather than replaces, the judgement of compliance professionals. Our ability to grow rapidly and generate value for thousands of companies puts us at the forefront of the European regulatory landscape,” said Jakob Lilholm, CEO, in a statement.
“This round reflects the strong momentum Formalise has built in Europe and investor confidence in our execution capabilities. We have demonstrated that compliance is mission-critical for companies of all sizes, and this capital allows us to continue scaling with discipline, strengthening our product and expanding our presence in Europe,” said CFO Christian Jessen.
“It is becoming increasingly difficult for small and medium-sized enterprises in the EU to manage all the requirements imposed by regulations. Formalize has impressed us with a superior solution that allows companies to keep complete control over their processes and data. No other solution we reviewed came close to Formalize’s ability to capture the specifics of all countries and sectors while keeping the platform easy to use,” comments Fritz Oidtmann, managing partner at Acton Capital.
“At BlackFin, we are increasingly convinced that Formalize has brought together the right product and team to become the compliance benchmark for European SMEs, transforming GDPR, NIS2 and DORA into simple and scalable processes. With extraordinary growth and increasingly rapid adoption driven by artificial intelligence, Formalize is ideally positioned to turn regulatory burdens into competitive advantages,” says Michele Foradori, managing director of BlackFin Tech.
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