Prior to its acceptance into Y Combinator, Complir had already proven its commercial viability. Over the past six months, the company has experienced 45% month-on-month growth and recently opened an office in France as part of its European expansion. In December 2025, the company raised €1.7 million in pre-seed funding at a post-money valuation of €6.8 million. The round was led by Vendep Capital with participation from Likeminded, Plug and Play, F-Log Ventures and a strong group of business angels from the retail industry and tech startup scene – including former Coop Group CEO Kraen Østergaard Nielsen, Coop Trading chairman and GS1 board member Per Thau, and Neil S. W. Murray from The Nordic Web Ventures. 

With its acceptance into Y Combinator, Complir now accelerates its growth with access to Silicon Valley’s most connected network of investors, founders and tech companies.

From Flying Tiger Copenhagen to Silicon Valley

Complir is not a typical startup story. The company was founded in Copenhagen in 2024 by Gustav Bang and Tine Kühnel, born out of a concrete problem at Flying Tiger Copenhagen – one of retail’s most complex operators, managing over 500 new products per month across 44 markets while facing increasing EU requirements around product compliance and traceability.

Rather than building a product in a vacuum, Complir gained full access to Flying Tiger Copenhagen’s organisation and developed its AI-driven compliance platform in close collaboration with one of retail’s most demanding operators. The result was a solution that was battle-tested from day one – and a reference brand that opened doors internationally.

“We have proven that our solution works inside some of Europe’s most complex retail organisations. YC now gives us the tools and the network to prove the same to the rest of the world – and to do it faster than we could alone,” 

says Gustav Bang, CEO of Complir.

For Complir, acceptance into YC means access to something that is hard to buy: credibility and a network in the US market from day one. The YC stamp of approval is, in Silicon Valley and among global investors, a mark of quality that opens doors that would otherwise take years to knock on.

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By turning the regulatory burden into an invisible part of the workflow, Complir is enabling European retailers to sell physical products globally without scaling up their compliance teams.

“[T]he momentum is real. Retailers across Europe are already using our platform to launch products into new markets with clarity, speed, and confidence,”

said Gustav Bang, co-founder

From the beginning, the co-founders – Gustav Bang, Tine Kühnel, Marc Kaa Brejner and Rasmus Lind, built Complir from inside the problem. By working directly within their customers’ teams, they gained a deep understanding of their data, workflows, and daily challenges.

That work shaped Complir into the AI-first platform it is today: helping retailers launch more products, in more markets, with fewer resources.

The € 1.7 million pre-seed round is led by Vendep Capital, with participation from Likeminded, Plug and Play Tech Center, F-LOG Ventures and an group of business angels: Kraen Oestergaard Nielsen, Neil Murray, Per Thau, and Jonas Büttcher. This is the first investment of Vendep Capital’s Fund IV.

Retailers across Europe are already using Complir to replace scattered spreadsheets and PDFs with a connected, intelligent compliance engine. Our AI agents surface market-access requirements in seconds, helping teams scale confidently and avoid costly surprises.

The solution allows retailers, like Flying Tiger Copenhagen, to check market-access requirements in seconds, significantly accelerating new product launches and international expansion.

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