Portuguese startup Coalex.ai has received investment from Angels Way to scale its platform, which acts as a decision firewall for AI systems in production, blocking risky actions, routing cases to humans, and generating auditable records of every decision.
“We know that 95% of AI projects do not deliver measurable results due to the lack of a layer of trust and quality. Coalex is that trust layer,” said CEO Carlos Lebre Ribeiro, in a statement cited by ECO.
He describes the company’s goal as making AI safe to deploy in production in the same way PayPal enabled trust in online payments, removing friction and fear around critical operations.
The investment amount was not disclosed. With this deal, Angels Way completes its 12th investment, bringing its total deployed capital to €600,000 across early-stage Portuguese startups backed by a community of 436 angel investors and managed under OW Ventures.
The fund invests up to €50,000 per startup, with the aim of deploying €1 million across 20 Portuguese startups with technological impact.
A ‘watchdog’ for AI decisions in production
Coalex positions itself as a decision firewall, designed to intervene directly in AI workflows by enforcing rules at the point of execution rather than analyzing outcomes after the fact.
“We do risk mitigation, compliance and quality control on a single platform, and on top of that we unlock insurance on AI agent actions so companies can deploy agents without fear,” adds Lebre Ribeiro, who co-founded the company with Frederico Côrte-Real.
The system is built around three core guarantees: block, route, and prove. It blocks AI outputs that exceed defined risk thresholds before execution, routes sensitive or uncertain decisions to human reviewers, and generates structured audit trails that make every decision traceable and defensible.
Built for regulated sectors and AI-native companies
Coalex targets two main groups: regulated enterprises and AI-native companies.
The first includes sectors such as banking, insurance, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals, where AI decisions must comply with strict oversight and regulatory requirements. The second includes startups where AI is the core product, and where reliability and compliance are part of the go-to-market expectation.
The company’s solution is already being used in regulated environments, including a pilot with Hospital da Luz focused on automatic validation of new treatment protocols, and work with insurer Fidelidade, where the platform helps ensure compliance in autonomous AI agent behavior.
Created by founders with experience across Talkdesk and Feedzai, as well as work at the European Commission, Coalex says its platform ensures that autonomous agents behave safely, ethically, and without causing harm to people or businesses.
Coalex is designed to support compliance with major regulatory frameworks, including the European Union AI Act and the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA).
Angels Way doubles down on AI infrastructure
According to OW Ventures managing partner Luís Filipe Gutman, the investment reflects both the strength of the founding team and the increasing urgency of AI risk management. “Coalex has a solid and experienced team, focused on solving a well-defined problem.”
He added that while AI adoption is accelerating, compliance risks and operational failures are also increasing, particularly in enterprise environments, and that Coalex strengthens Angels Way’s focus on AI infrastructure and control systems.
Expansion plans set for 2027
Following this investment, Coalex will focus on product development and scaling across enterprise and AI-native customers.
The company is planning a new funding round in 2027 to support international expansion, with a focus on the DACH region (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), as well as the United States and Brazil.
Featured image: Coalex.ai co-founder and CEO Carlos Lebre Ribeiro (Photo courtesy of Carlos Lebre Ribeiro/LinkedIn)
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