FairNow is an enterprise AI governance platform founded in 2023 in McLean, Virginia. It helps organisations inventory internal models, vendor AI, and employee AI use cases; run AI risk assessments; map controls to frameworks like NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001, ISO 23894, and the EU AI Act; and generate audit-ready documentation and approval trails. The clearest public proof point is FairNow’s Cielo case study: Cielo used the platform to govern 50+ AI systems and complete ISO 42001 certification in 3.5 months with zero nonconformities. GOV.UK’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology AI assurance catalogue independently describes FairNow as a ‘single source of truth’ for AI inventory, governance workflows, vendor AI risk management, and regulatory tracking. Funding is modest but real: FairNow announced a $3.5M seed round on June 20, 2024, while Technical.ly reported that total included $2.5M seed plus a converted $1M pre-seed. AuditBoard announced a definitive agreement to acquire FairNow on October 22, 2025; FairNow’s standalone product pages remained live as of March 9, 2026, so the product still appears to be operating as an independent brand inside AuditBoard. Legal relevance is mainly in-house: GC, legal ops, compliance, privacy, procurement, and risk teams that need an intake and evidence layer for AI governance. We found no law firm deployment evidence, little credible Reddit or review-site signal, and no public pricing.
Company Info
- Founded: 2023
- Team size: 1-10 employees
- Funding: $3.5M
- HQ: Canada
- Sector: Governance/Compliance/Risk Management
What We Haven’t Verified
This page was assembled from publicly available information. Feature claims and workflow mappings are based on what the vendor and third-party listings publish — not hands-on testing or practitioner feedback.
Workflows
Based on practitioner evidence, Fairnow is used in these workflows:
What practitioners struggle with
Real frustrations from legal professionals — the problems Fairnow addresses (or should address). Sourced from practitioner reviews, Reddit threads, and case studies.
Compliance officer at a regulated financial institution tracks 150+ regulatory obligations across 10 frameworks (SOX, GDPR, HIPAA, state-level requirements) in separate spreadsheets with manual deadline reminders — an auditor's request for evidence of control testing takes days to assemble because documentation is scattered across email, SharePoint, and local drives
Business teams are deploying AI tools faster than legal can review them — there's no intake queue, no risk framework, and the GC finds out about new AI systems from LinkedIn posts, not from an approval workflow
Company decides to get ISO 42001-ready or prove EU AI Act readiness and immediately hits a basic problem: nobody can answer 'what AI do we actually use?' HR has one hiring model, product teams have internal copilots, procurement approved vendor AI in six contracts, and there is no owner map or system inventory — so the certification project turns into a spreadsheet chase across 12 departments
Where it fits in your workflow
Before Fairnow
Business units, HR, procurement, IT, and product teams start adopting internal models, vendor AI, and employee AI tools faster than the governance function can track them. Legal, compliance, privacy, and risk then get asked to establish ownership, classify risk, and determine which frameworks apply.
After Fairnow
After intake and inventory, organisations assign AI owners, run risk reviews, map controls to NIST AI RMF / ISO 42001 / EU AI Act requirements, generate transparency or audit documentation, and monitor new risks or regulatory changes. Procurement and security teams then use that record during vendor review and renewal decisions.
Integrations & hand-offs
FairNow sits between business requestors and enterprise control functions: procurement, security, privacy, legal, compliance, HR, product, and risk. FairNow claims API integration with existing MLOps, GRC, workflow, and collaboration tools, but we did not verify specific connectors or SSO mechanisms.
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