Claudio Fuentes
Technical founder who builds and ships. Deep expertise in AI products, enterprise sales, and scaling teams from zero.
Press Kit
For media inquiries: claudio@trycomp.ai
Short bio (60 words)
Claudio Fuentes is co-founder of Comp AI, the open-source AI compliance platform. Founded in January 2025, Comp AI has surpassed $5M ARR and serves more than 700 companies. Previously, Claudio was co-founder and CEO of Leap AI, which scaled to one million users. Born in Mexico City and based in New York City.
Standard bio (190 words)
Claudio Fuentes is co-founder of Comp AI, the open-source AI compliance platform automating SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR for fast-moving companies. Founded in January 2025 with CEO Lewis Carhart and his brother, CTO Mariano Fuentes, Comp AI has surpassed $5M ARR and serves more than 700 companies in under twelve months, backed by Grand Ventures and OSS Capital. The company's mission is to help 100,000 companies achieve compliance by 2032.
Previously, Claudio was co-founder and CEO of Leap AI, a no-code AI workflow platform that grew to more than one million users and served customers including Heineken, Inflection, and Live Nation. Leap raised $1.4M from Founders Inc., David Cramer (founder of Sentry), and Paul Copplestone (founder of Supabase). Earlier, he led AI product at Pypestream, building enterprise AI for Fortune 500s including Shell, JPMorgan Chase, P&G, and HBO Max, and joined WeWork during its hyper-growth era.
Born in Mexico City and based in New York City, Claudio began his career as an electronic music producer under the alias Klaud, performing at Ultra Music Festival and opening for Steve Angello.
Long bio (340 words)
Claudio Fuentes is co-founder of Comp AI, the open-source AI compliance platform automating SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR for fast-moving companies. Founded in January 2025 with CEO Lewis Carhart and his brother, CTO Mariano Fuentes, Comp AI has surpassed $5M ARR and serves more than 700 companies in under twelve months, backed by Grand Ventures and OSS Capital. The company's mission is to help 100,000 companies achieve compliance by 2032.
Previously, Claudio was co-founder and CEO of Leap AI, a no-code AI workflow platform that grew to more than one million users and served customers including Heineken, Inflection, and Live Nation. Leap raised $1.4M from Founders Inc., David Cramer (founder of Sentry), and Paul Copplestone (founder of Supabase). Earlier, he led AI product at Pypestream, where he ran cross-functional teams building enterprise AI for Fortune 500s including Shell, JPMorgan Chase, P&G, HBO Max, and Royal Caribbean. He joined WeWork during its hyper-growth era as a Growth Associate.
A self-taught full-stack engineer, Claudio writes the first line of code on every product he founds. He is a vocal advocate for in-person startup culture; his Business Insider piece on returning Comp AI to a five-day office argued that the pace of innovation he sees in person is unattainable over Slack.
Born in Mexico City and raised in Florida after his family relocated during the 2008 financial crisis, Claudio began his career as an electronic music producer under the alias Klaud. As a teenager, he performed at Ultra Music Festival, headlined a tour in Malaysia, and opened for Steve Angello (Swedish House Mafia) and Sander Van Doorn before signing tracks to Universal Music. He credits the Klaud era with teaching him distribution before product. Claudio is based in New York City.
Quick facts
- Title: Co-founder, Comp AI
- Based: New York City
- Hometown: Mexico City
- Languages: Spanish, English
- Press contact: claudio@trycomp.ai
Boilerplate: Comp AI
Comp AI is the open-source AI compliance platform automating SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR for fast-moving companies. Founded in 2025 by Lewis Carhart, Claudio Fuentes, and Mariano Fuentes, Comp AI has surpassed $5M ARR and serves more than 700 companies in under twelve months. The company is backed by Grand Ventures and OSS Capital. Its mission is to help 100,000 companies achieve compliance by 2032. Learn more at trycomp.ai.
Background
Claudio Fuentes Salinas, born in Mexico City in the 1990s. Moved to South Florida at 14 when my family relocated during the 2008 financial crisis. My father sold everything we owned in Mexico. Within two years, we'd lost it all — at the lowest point, we lived in a motel for months while my mom asked churches for food.
That experience woke something up in me. I realized that if I wanted things in life, I'd have to go out and get them myself. Spent six years in New York and four in San Francisco building companies. Returned to NYC in 2025 to scale Comp AI.
Native Spanish and English speaker.
First Business: Music
My father was an internationally renowned vocalist. Started on piano, guitar, and drums early. At 14, taught myself to produce electronic music as “Klaud.”
At 16, started hustling clubs in Miami — selling tickets, building leverage, then negotiating my way onto stage. Built a team around me: manager, marketer, designers. Scaled to 20,000+ fans and signed to Bash Records at 18.
That leverage got me to Ultra Music Festival (2013–2014), headlining tours in Malaysia, clubs in Ibiza, and opening for Steve Angello (Swedish House Mafia), Sander Van Doorn, and Disco Fries. Signed tracks to EMPO (Universal Music) and Disco Fries' label, with an offer from Armada (Armin van Buuren's label). This was my first lesson in building something from zero — and it's what pushed me toward tech.
Education
Associate's Degree in Music Composition from Miami Dade College. Studied Computer Information Systems at Baruch College (Zicklin School of Business) before leaving to build companies. Certificate in Disruptive Strategy from Harvard Business School Online (2020).
Technical
Self-taught full-stack developer since 2017. Web: TypeScript, React, Next.js, Node.js, Nest.js, Tailwind. Backend: Python, Node.js. Mobile: React Native, Flutter, Swift.
Deployed to Vercel, AWS, and GCP. Comfortable with serverless, traditional server, and event-driven architectures. Built every product I've founded from the first commit.
Enterprise Experience
WeWork (2016)
Growth Associate during the hyper-growth phase. Focused on operational scaling and market expansion.
AskNed (2017–2018)
Co-founder. Built an AI-powered analytics engine that connected to Facebook Ads, Google AdWords, and Shopify. Closed enterprise deals with NBCUniversal and Lionsgate. Left to join Pypestream for a stronger product opportunity.
Pypestream (2019–2022)
Senior Product Manager leading AI product development. Owned the self-serve AI studio, visual flow designer, NLP capabilities, and analytics platform. The platform handled 50M+ customer interactions monthly.
Directly impacted enterprise clients including Shell, Chase, Procter & Gamble, HBO Max, Royal Caribbean, and Gillette. Supported sales cycles for top accounts and presented the product to potential acquirers during M&A conversations.
Led cross-functional product teams of 12+ engineers and designers.
Elise AI (2025)
Staff Software Engineer building healthcare AI voice products. Left to co-found Comp AI — couldn't sit out the generative AI wave as anything other than a founder.
Founder
Comp AI (2025–present)
Co-founder. Building with CEO Lewis Carhart and my brother Mariano Fuentes (CTO) since January 2025. AI-powered compliance automation for startups on the path to becoming unicorns. SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR — faster, with AI handling the backend processes.
$5M+ ARR and 700+ companies in under 12 months. 15-person team across NYC and SF. Raised $2.6M pre-seed co-led by Grand Ventures and OSS Capital. Angels include David Cramer (Sentry) — who backed me again after Leap AI — and Ben Tossell (Ben's Bites).
Integrates with 450+ tools. Customers across fintech, healthcare, and infrastructure. Part of Vercel's Spring '25 OSS initiative.
Leap AI (2023–2024)
Co-founder & CEO. Wrote the initial codebase and scaled the engineering team. No-code platform for AI workflows. Spun out from Founders Inc. after joining as studio founder, working with mentors Hubert Thieblot (Curse → Twitch) and Furqan Rydhan (AppLovin, Bebo → Amazon).
Scaled to $1M ARR and 1M+ users in 18 months. Raised $1.4M seed led by Founders Inc., with David Cramer (Sentry), Paul Copplestone (Supabase), and executives from Google and AngelList. Clients included Heineken, Inflection, and Live Nation. After two years, we couldn't find deeper product-market fit and made the decision to wind down.
Noonshot (2022–2023)
Co-founder. Solo-built the platform — no-code tools for digital collectibles. Scaled to 120,000+ monthly active users. Raised $160K but ran out of runway as the market shifted.
Approach
I'm a generalist who goes deep. Technical enough to build and ship product, commercial enough to close enterprise deals. I care about craft and moving fast without sacrificing quality. Success is consistency over time — there's nothing else to it.
Strong believer in in-person work. All Comp AI employees work five days a week from the NYC office. One morning, a teammate walked up and said “What if we build an AI agent for customer support?” Twenty minutes later, we had a working prototype that cut support requests by 95%. That kind of innovation doesn't happen over Slack.
Podcast
Documenting the Comp AI journey on Vibe Scaling. Three co-founders building in public.
