Dili Raises $15M from Khosla to Automate Infrastructure Compliance
Dili (dili.com) has raised a $15 million Series A led by Khosla Ventures to automate labor and wage compliance on large construction, energy, and data center projects, TechCrunch reported. Allianz, Darren Bechtel of Brick & Mortar Ventures, and Y Combinator's Garry Tan also participated. The round follows a $6.7 million seed backed by Pioneer Fund, Allianz, Rebel Fund, and Y Combinator.
The company, part of Y Combinator's Summer 2023 batch, focuses on a narrow but expensive problem: the overlapping rule sets that govern federally funded construction. Davis-Bacon requires contractors to pay Department of Labor prevailing wages on certain projects, while a separate regime of prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements applies to clean energy projects claiming credits under the Inflation Reduction Act. OSHA and EPA obligations layer on depending on the work. Dili ingests payroll systems, ERP records, and vendor documents, then checks the resulting data against those requirements rather than sampling a subset of it.
Co-founder and CEO Anand Chaturvedi told TechCrunch that fines for getting it wrong run into the millions of dollars per project, which is why checking every record as it arrives matters more than spot checks.
"One missed compliance requirement can put hundreds of millions of dollars at risk, creating an urgent need for 100% visibility across every project portfolio."
Anand Chaturvedi, Co-Founder and CEO of DiliThe software is now running on roughly 700 projects spanning manufacturing plants and data centers, representing about $4 billion in project spend, with more than 1,000 developers, engineering and construction firms, and contractors touching the system. Chaturvedi says usage has grown more than 500% since the seed round closed six months ago, and Dili's Y Combinator profile says its compliance work has helped customers secure over $1 billion in federal funding.
Reliability is the technical constraint that shaped the product. Dili confines current AI models to its data layer, where unstructured documents get converted into structured records. A deterministic engine then applies the compliance rules, which are complicated but fixed. Work that previously consumed a full day can finish in minutes.
About half of Dili's customers run the platform themselves as an internal tool. The other half hand the compliance function to Dili on a contractor basis. The company supports both, though Chaturvedi expects the balance to tilt toward software as buyers get more comfortable bringing the work back in-house.
Chaturvedi previously led engagement growth at Coinbase and built KYC and AML systems there, and published machine learning research at Apple. He co-founded Dili with Brian Fernandez. The company started out automating due diligence for private equity and venture deal teams before moving into compliance for physical industries.