Coverbase adds third-party risk veterans as enterprise adoption accelerates. Brian Shaw and Constantine Malaxos join as enterprise customers expand across financial services, healthcare, and technology. SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 29, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) - Coverbase, AI engineered for third-party risk management (TPRM), today announced that Brian Shaw has joined as GTM Lead and Constantine Malaxos as Head of Alliances. Both bring decades of experience building and selling third-party risk technology to large enterprises. In less than a year since closing its Series A, Coverbase has rapidly expanded its enterprise customer base, which now includes two of the Fortune 10. New customers include CVS Health, Huntington Bank, Alaska Airlines, Guardant Health, Edward Jones, Equinix, and Tradeweb, joining Nationwide and Coinbase. The platform has also expanded from AI-driven assessments into continuous monitoring, application security verification and contract controls, each built for how third-party risk teams actually work rather than adapted from general-purpose AI. Customers are seeing the results. In its Q2 2026 earnings materials, Equity Bank said AI now produces initial third-party risk reviews in about five minutes. "Most AI in this category has been layered onto workflows designed for sending and scoring questionnaires. That may speed up the old process, but it doesn't change what the process can know, which is why point-in-time assessment is done as a category," said Clarence Chio, CEO and co-founder of Coverbase. "We engineered Coverbase around the work of third-party risk itself, from reading evidence against a customer's own controls to watching vendors change between reviews. Brian and Constantine have spent years inside the companies that shaped this industry, and their decision to join us says a lot about where it is heading." Shaw brings more than 25 years in risk and compliance automation, focused on third-party risk in financial services since 2011. He was most recently Vice President and Head of North America at Certa, and previously held TPRM leadership roles at Mirato, Coupa and Opus Global. He will lead go-to-market strategy and enterprise sales. "I have spent my career watching TPRM programs grow more sophisticated while the foundation underneath them stayed the same, a questionnaire sent out and an answer taken largely on trust," said Shaw. "Coverbase inverts that model by establishing what is true about a vendor first and asking questions second, which is what risk leaders and examiners have wanted for years. I joined because that shift will define the next generation of third-party risk, and I wanted to help lead it." Malaxos has spent his career building alliances between risk technology providers, advisory firms and data partners, most recently as Vice President of Global Partners and Alliances at ProcessUnity and earlier at Hiperos, later acquired by Coupa. He will build Coverbase's advisory, consulting and data partner ecosystem and support international expansion. "The advisors, assessors and intelligence providers around a third-party risk program shape how it runs as much as the software does, and AI makes those relationships more valuable by putting their expertise and data to work continuously," said Malaxos. "Coverbase is built to take in that intelligence rather than compete with it, which makes it a platform partners can build on." About Coverbase Coverbase is AI engineered for third-party risk management, from vendor intake through contracts. It evaluates vendor evidence against each customer's own controls, shows the reasoning and source behind every finding, and keeps vendor risk current as vendors change. Founded in 2024 and headquartered in San Francisco, Coverbase is backed by Canapi Ventures, Fika Ventures, TTV Capital, Pear VC and Valley Ventures. Learn more at coverbase.com. Media Contact Shannon Pham [email protected] Legal Disclaimer: EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.

Coverbase raises $20M Series A led by Canapi Ventures. Coverbase reduces procurement workloads by 90%, freeing businesses to reduce third-party risks and accelerate the adoption of new technologies. Coverbase, the industry's only security-first third-party AI procurement and risk platform, today announced the successful close of a Series A financing round led by Canapi Ventures, following a prior $3.5 million seed round, bringing the company's total funding to $20 million. This investment will fuel Coverbase's expansion into new verticals and scale its risk-aware procurement platform beyond third-party risk management into the broader procurement lifecycle, including vendor sourcing, intake, contract management, and purchase order creation. The round includes participation from both existing and new investors, including Fika Ventures, TTV Capital, Pear VC, Valley Bank, and Founders You Should Know, underscoring strong conviction in Coverbase's vision and accelerating momentum. According to the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, the share of breaches involving third parties doubled from 2024 to 2025 to 30%, making it one of the prevalent and costliest threats to businesses today. This growth is directly tied to outdated procurement practices, where highly regulated organizations rely on lengthy questionnaires and box-checking instead of real-time risk evaluation, creating blind spots that adversaries routinely exploit. "Traditional procurement isn't just broken, it's actively hindering progress. Risk and compliance teams spend countless hours chasing paperwork instead of identifying and mitigating real threats, which slows innovation adoption while leaving critical risks that are being exploited regularly," said Clarence Chio, CEO and Co-founder of Coverbase. "With AI and agent-based automation, Coverbase is eliminating repetitive, low-value tasks, freeing businesses to focus on reducing risk and accelerating deployment of new technology innovations. We're excited to partner with Canapi Ventures and tap into their expertise as we evolve our platform into a complete procurement orchestration system." Prior to Coverbase, Chio was the Chief Technology Officer and Co-founder of Unit21, which raised over $90M from Google and Tiger Global to fight financial crime. In this role, he experienced firsthand how slow, manual procurement processes limited technology adoption and increased risk. Chio is joined by Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Kao Zi Chong Kao, who previously led risk engineering at Stripe. Since launching in 2024, Coverbase has turned the procurement bottleneck into a streamlined process where risk, security, and compliance are embedded into decisions from the start. Today, more than 40 customers, including Nationwide Insurance, Navy Federal Credit Union, Coinbase, Okta, Bill, Coastal Community Bank, Live Oak Bank, and ServiceTitan, are experiencing a 90-92% reduction in time spent on procurement tasks. This translates to $180 million in procurement person-hours saved across all customers and a dramatically accelerated path to new technology deployments. "Coverbase has been instrumental in transforming how we manage third-party risk," said Christelle Chau, VP of Security GRC at Okta. "Their forward-thinking, AI-driven platform has streamlined and modernized our security oversight, allowing us to operate with greater efficiency and confidence." "Working with Coverbase has strengthened our third-party oversight, accelerating assessments and ensuring the highest level of protection for our members through AI-driven automation," said Michelle Drake, AVP, Information Security Third Party Risk at Navy Federal Credit Union, the world's largest credit union and an early adopter of Coverbase. "Coverbase is eliminating the inefficiencies in the procurement process at scale with an AI-powered platform that turns vendor onboarding into a competitive advantage. In just over one year, the team has delivered measurable ROI by helping some of the world's most security-conscious organizations cut procurement timelines while reducing third-party risk," said Walker Forehand, Co-founder & General Partner at Canapi Ventures. We're proud to back Coverbase and help it further evolve its offerings and reshape how global enterprises adopt innovation securely and efficiently." Looking ahead, Coverbase will expand beyond highly regulated, security-conscious sectors such as financial services, banks, credit unions, insurance companies, and enterprise technology providers, and into healthcare and pharmaceuticals. It will also add new capabilities that extend beyond its focus on third-party risk assessments to include upstream procurement processes. These include vendor sourcing, spend analysis, contract intelligence, and invoicing. By delivering an end-to-end procurement platform, Coverbase will not only streamline vendor payment workflows, it will also ensure enterprises bring in the right capabilities while minimizing risk exposure. About Coverbase Founded in 2024, Coverbase delivers the industry's only AI-native procurement platform that empowers Fortune 500s, banks, and security-first organizations to embed risk management into every supplier decision. By transforming procurement from an operational burden into a strategic advantage, Coverbase customers are achieving a 90-92% reduction in procurement workloads - saving an estimated $180 million in man-hours - and dramatically accelerating the adoption of new technologies. For more information, please visit www.coverbase.com About Canapi Ventures Canapi is a B2B software and financial technology venture and growth equity platform investing in early to growth-stage companies offering disruptive alternatives to outdated business models and technologies. Backed by the Canapi Alliance - a network of over 70 of the leading financial institutions across the United States - Canapi's partners have decades of hands-on experience in financial services. Canapi brings unmatched sector experience and best-in-class knowledge, connections, and credibility to founders. To learn more about Canapi, visit www.canapi.com.