A worldwide enterprise AI assurance agency, AURÄI, has launched on the thirtieth anniversary convention of the ISACA Lagos Chapter, with a platform designed to assist companies monitor, govern and certify their AI operations as adoption outpaces oversight.
The launch was introduced on Friday throughout Day 2 of the convention at Oriental Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos, the place founder and CEO Olayinka James warned that enterprises are working AI techniques that contact clients, staff and essential choices with out sufficient governance.
Olayinka informed auditors, threat leaders and cybersecurity professionals that whereas 88% of organisations now use AI in not less than one enterprise perform and 93% of inner audit features use AI in some type, solely 38% of audit groups have a technique for it. He added that simply 38% of organisations have a complete coverage for the AI instruments their employees already use.
According to the AI governance business chief, a typical enterprise now runs greater than 150 AI instruments that its IT workforce has by no means seen.
“Adoption everywhere. Assurance almost nowhere,” he mentioned. “Our banks run models for credit and fraud today. Our fintechs ship on foundation models faster than policy can read them. Our agencies pilot systems that touch citizens directly.”
From recording choices to making them
AURÄI, co-founded by Olayinka James, Mohammed Mijindadi and Chris Kanwei, is constructing what it describes as a worldwide enterprise system to shut that hole.
Olayinka mentioned the present second mirrors the early 2000s cycle of Adoption, Reckoning, Regulation and the start of a brand new occupation. Then, the late-Nineteen Nineties adoption of ERP techniques and digital ledgers was adopted by the collapse of Enron and WorldCom in 2001 and 2002 and the disappearance of audit large Arthur Andersen, main to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 which compelled executives to certify controls and created the IT auditor and the CISA certification.
“This time the machines are not recording the decisions. They are making them — credit, claims, benefits, identity — at machine speed and population scale,” he mentioned.
He cited Summer 2026 as AI’s reckoning interval — about 1,200 AI brokers linked to a breach of Hugging Face in July, a two-week pause in reinforcement studying improvement by OpenAI in August, the general public resignation of an Anthropic researcher, Google’s Gemini escaping a check sandbox into three actual firms, a breach of Australia’s Medicare portal, and a fast regulatory response together with California’s SB 813 and AB 1405 mandating unbiased AI auditors and a state registry, the White House Accord committing frontier labs to unbiased exterior auditors and board oversight, and 12 extra AI legal guidelines signed in California on 1 October.
If it took ten months from Enron’s collapse to Sarbanes-Oxley, he famous, this time it took about seven weeks — a shift he referred to as the “AI SOX moment” that can mint a brand new occupation: the AI assurance skilled.
How AURÄI works
AURÄI says it combines AI brokers that automate governance, threat and compliance actions with educated professionals who oversee their work.
The platform helps AI system discovery, proof assortment, management testing, coverage drafting and audit documentation. Its brokers function inside outlined boundaries and file their actions, whereas licensed professionals evaluate outputs, problem findings and log out on essential choices.
“AI agents should escalate to human judgement instead of guessing,” Olayinka mentioned.
Alongside the platform, AURÄI trains and certifies professionals to function its brokers and oversee their execution, reflecting what Olayinka described as a altering workforce requirement.
“AI will not take your job. Someone who mastered it will.”
The mannequin, he mentioned, was born from a recurring downside he noticed throughout greater than 20 years in enterprise audit and cybersecurity roles at Deloitte, PwC, Citigroup, GE Digital and Zimmer Biomet, the place he beforehand served as Chief Information Security Officer and Global Head of IT Audit: organisations had sound frameworks however struggled to implement them effectively.
“The same pattern repeated everywhere: the frameworks were sound, the execution was broken.”
Why it issues
For enterprises, weak AI oversight creates operational, monetary and reputational dangers, significantly in industries the place automated choices have an effect on clients and staff.
With laws such because the EU AI Act introducing necessities round threat administration, transparency and human oversight, organisations want sensible methods to exhibit that their AI techniques are appropriately ruled.
AURÄI goals to assist them produce that proof for inner assurance groups, exterior auditors, regulators and boards.
The firm is led by three co-founders with expertise spanning audit, infrastructure and institutional funding.
About the co-founders
Olayinka James is the founder and chief government officer of AURÄI.
He brings greater than 20 years of expertise spanning enterprise audit, cybersecurity, data safety management and governance throughout organisations together with Deloitte, PwC, Citigroup, GE Digital and Zimmer Biomet. He beforehand served as Chief Information Security Officer and Global Head of IT Audit at Zimmer Biomet, the place his work included enhancing audit preparation and decreasing audit exceptions.
Mohammed Mijindadi is a co-founder and the chief industrial officer of AURÄI.
He is the founding father of Africa Infrastructure Solutions Ltd (AISL), former President of GE Nigeria and former Managing Director of GE Vernova Gas Power West Africa.
He has negotiated greater than $1 billion in infrastructure agreements with 5 African governments, and leads industrial growth and enterprise partnerships at AURÄI.
This adopted earlier management positions in GE Transportation and GE Gas Power Systems. His profession started in engineering and building, together with work with Julius Berger Nigeria and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, earlier than transferring into industrial, strategic and government management.
Chris Kanwei is a co-founder and the chief monetary officer of AURÄI.
He is the founding father of RealCorp Capital and a former institutional investor at Aviva and Morgan Stanley overlaying EMEA. He brings deep experience in institutional capital, threat and cross-border funding, and leads finance and capital technique at AURÄI. Chris is an ecosystem builder and neighborhood chief who writes about African ventures, funding and diaspora capital.
Through AURÄI, the trio are pursuing a broader imaginative and prescient, and that’s combining AI-powered enterprise governance with the coaching and certification of pros able to overseeing its execution.
AURÄI is now increasing its engagement with enterprise clients and design companions by inviting banks, fintechs, consulting companies and different organisations that construct or use AI to discover its platform by means of a demo and waitlist at https://www.auraisystems.ai/.
