Selin Kocalar is part of a rising generation of technically adept founders tackling complex, often overlooked enterprise problems.
While studying artificial intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), she co-founded Delve alongside fellow student Karun Kaushik.
Their collaboration began in their very first week on campus. Initially, they worked on an AI-powered medical scribe. But when they encountered the heavy demands of HIPAA compliance, they pivoted.
The frustration became the spark: instead of avoiding the problem, they chose to solve it.
Founded in 2023, Delve began as a student project but quickly gained momentum. Its pitch was straightforward and compelling: automate compliance — across standards like HIPAA, SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, and PCI DSS — using AI agents.
The goal was to eliminate the months of manual labour companies typically spend gathering evidence, preparing for audits, and managing documentation. What followed was rapid validation.
In July 2025, Delve raised a $32 million Series A round led by Insight Partners, just months after closing its seed round. By then, the company had grown from serving 100 clients to over 500, including many fast-scaling startups and SaaS firms.
Kocalar, who serves as Delve’s chief operating officer, oversees revenue operations, go-to-market strategy, and the infrastructure needed to scale. Her background is both technical and research-heavy: by the age of 20, she had authored eight peer-reviewed papers.
That foundation shapes her approach. She often frames Delve’s work not just as a B2B platform, but as a way to give engineers and companies the freedom to build without being bogged down by administrative drag.
Delve’s product is AI-native from the ground up. Its agents integrate directly with a company’s internal environment — cloud infrastructure, tools, logs — and automatically generate audit-ready compliance evidence.
This removes the need for screenshots, spreadsheets, or manual uploads. It also supports a wide range of frameworks, making it easier for companies to navigate a regulatory maze that is only getting more complex. Customers report compressing compliance timelines from months to days, giving them a faster path to closing enterprise deals.
What sets the story apart is not just the technology, but the execution. Founding a venture-backed, high-valuation startup before the age of 23 is rare. Doing so in a space as unglamorous as regulatory compliance is rarer still.
But Delve’s appeal lies precisely in its focus on a real, widespread pain point. Compliance is often seen as a necessary evil — costly, time-consuming, and a common reason enterprise deals get delayed.
Delve reframes it as an opportunity: by removing friction, it helps companies unlock growth. It also exemplifies how AI can rewire business infrastructure, not merely enhance consumer-facing tasks.
Yet as the company scales, new challenges emerge. With more clients depending on Delve for sensitive security and privacy-related compliance, its automation must withstand real-world audits and regulatory scrutiny.
Accuracy, reliability, and transparency are no longer optional — they are critical. Internally, the pressure will be to grow responsibly. That means hiring carefully, maintaining culture, and avoiding the operational pitfalls that plague fast-growing firms.
Competition is another concern. As compliance automation becomes a hotter space, Delve’s early lead will be tested. The company must continue to differentiate — on speed, trust, customer experience, and technical edge. The regulatory landscape is also shifting rapidly, with new frameworks emerging for AI, data privacy, and international standards. Delve’s agility in adapting its platform will be key.
Still, Kocalar’s trajectory is striking. From MIT dorm rooms to a $300 million valuation in two years, she exemplifies a new archetype of founder: technically grounded, operationally sharp, and unafraid to tackle problems others find dull but vital.
Delve is more than a clever use of AI; it is a bet on removing one of the biggest bottlenecks to enterprise growth. If the company succeeds at scale, her story may serve as a model for how today’s engineers are becoming tomorrow’s infrastructure builders.
