John Daley is Co-Founder and CEO of HelmGuard, a London-based agentic governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) platform that uses AI agents to continuously collect and assess risk signals directly from source systems.

John originally trained as a technology lawyer and spent eight years as an executive at Palantir, where he handled deals across public and private sectors and oversaw internal security, compliance, and data protection.

John believes legacy compliance platforms were built to document processes rather than reach conclusions, and founded HelmGuard on the conviction that AI agents can replace static checklists with continuous, verified risk assurance.

At Palantir, John gained deep expertise in enterprise risk, data protection, and cross-sector deal-making before co-founding HelmGuard in 2024 alongside CTO Jack Miller, an AI researcher with roots in early large language model development at OpenAI and Google.

HelmGuard raised a $7.3M seed round co-led by Infinity Ventures and Frontline, with backing from FinTech Collective, Stage 2 Capital, and Entrepreneurs First, and is now expanding into the US with offices in New York and San Francisco alongside its London headquarters.