In the fast-paced world of artificial intelligence, disruption often comes from bold ideas aimed at glamorous problems. Selin Kocalar, however, chose a far less celebrated challenge — and in doing so, built one of the most compelling young AI startups to emerge from the MIT ecosystem. As the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Delve, Kocalar is transforming regulatory compliance from a bureaucratic headache into a strategic advantage for modern businesses.

The story of Delve begins at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Kocalar met her co-founder, Karun Kaushik, while immersed in a culture that prizes curiosity, speed, and problem-solving. Like many student founders, they initially experimented with building an AI medical product. That journey brought them face-to-face with the exhausting complexity of frameworks such as HIPAA and SOC 2 — processes that drained time, resources, and momentum. Instead of treating compliance as an unavoidable burden, Kocalar recognized it as a broken system waiting to be rebuilt.

Delve emerged from that insight. Powered by intelligent AI agents, the platform automates the end-to-end compliance journey, from evidence collection to audit readiness, across global frameworks such as SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA, and ISO standards. Unlike traditional tools that merely digitize paperwork, Delve integrates directly into a company’s infrastructure, quietly working in the background to maintain continuous compliance. What once took months can now be achieved in weeks — or less.

Kocalar’s strength lies not only in technical fluency but also in operational clarity. Her background in advanced research — including work associated with leading laboratories and projects that extended to the International Space Station — informs her disciplined approach to building scalable systems. That blend of scientific rigour and startup urgency helped propel Delve through Y Combinator and into rapid market adoption.

Today, Delve serves hundreds of fast-growing companies and has attracted significant investor confidence, positioning itself as a key player in the future of enterprise AI. Yet Kocalar remains refreshingly grounded about success. She often emphasizes that hard work alone is not enough — choosing the right problem is just as important.

From MIT classrooms to Silicon Valley boardrooms, Selin Kocalar’s journey reflects a new generation of founders: thoughtful, technically sharp, and unafraid to tackle unglamorous problems with outsized impact. In redefining compliance, she is also redefining what meaningful innovation looks like.

Pic Credit: Selvin Kocalar LinkedIn