TECHNOMALIST
The wave of infrastructure projects needed to support artificial intelligence and clean energy is creating a messy compliance burden—and one startup argues AI is the best tool to untangle it.
Dili, an AI compliance platform focused on construction and infrastructure, announced a $15 million Series A funding round on Thursday. The investment was led by Khosla Ventures, with Allianz, Rebel Fund, Brick and Mortar Ventures’ Darren Bechtel, and Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan also participating. The company has now raised $21.7 million in total, including a $6.7 million seed round, and is a graduate of Y Combinator’s Summer 2023 batch.
While “AI for compliance” is a common pitch, Dili zeroes in on the specific knot of regulations that govern large infrastructure projects, especially those that receive federal funding. CEO and co-founder Anand Chaturvedi told TechCrunch that the rules are both complex and unforgiving. He cited the Davis-Bacon Act, which lets the Department of Labor set prevailing wages, and separate prevailing wage and apprenticeship rules for clean energy projects funded through the Inflation Reduction Act. Other requirements from OSHA or the EPA can also come into play.
Even minor errors can trigger severe penalties. “Non-compliance can result in millions of dollars of fines for those projects,” Chaturvedi said. He argues that AI’s ability to scrutinize every data point, rather than just sampling, changes the game.
Dili’s technical approach aims to avoid the well‑known risk of large language models generating plausible but incorrect outputs. The company confines the use of contemporary AI models to a data‑ingestion layer: they extract information from unstructured documents—vendor contracts, payroll records, ERP data—and convert it into structured data. A deterministic system then applies the static compliance rules. Chaturvedi says a process that once consumed a full workday can now be completed in minutes.
The platform is already in use on approximately 700 projects, according to Chaturvedi, spanning manufacturing facilities and data centers. That scale hints at a broader trend: the very data center and energy buildout that powers AI may itself become a customer for AI‑driven tools.
Dili offers its software both as a tool for in‑house compliance teams and as a fully outsourced service. Currently, the split is roughly even. Chaturvedi expects that to shift toward the software model as firms become more comfortable with AI. “Software and AI are going to start eating a lot of those professional services workflows,” he said, adding that the market’s evolution will be shaped by how customer needs change alongside AI advances.
(This report is based on original coverage by TechCrunch.)
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