Kieran Taylor

Kieran Taylor
Occupation	Entrepreneur, software executive
Known for	Co-founder and CEO of Midship

Kieran Taylor is a British entrepreneur and co-founder and CEO of Midship, a software company that develops artificial intelligence tools for Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance testing. Midship participated in Y Combinator's Summer 2024 batch.

Career

Prior to founding Midship, Taylor worked at Deloitte, Amazon, and Instacart. He is originally from the United Kingdom and is based in San Francisco, California.

Taylor co-founded Midship in 2024 alongside Aahel Iyer and Max Maio. The company focuses on automating internal audit processes, beginning with SOX compliance testing. SOX testing is a regulatory requirement for publicly traded companies in the United States, involving the examination of internal controls over financial reporting. Traditionally, this work is labor-intensive, requiring auditors to gather evidence, perform procedural tests, and produce detailed documentation.

Midship's platform uses AI agents that autonomously perform audit work end-to-end, including evidence collection, control testing, and the creation of documented work papers. The company states that its technology can automate more than 85 percent of SOX controls, with the goal of allowing auditors to focus on higher-judgment tasks such as risk assessment and advisory work rather than repetitive procedural activities. The platform's work papers are compatible with Microsoft Excel, and every conclusion generated by the system is linked to source documents for review.

Midship is used by public companies for SOX testing, with Reddit among its publicly referenced clients. The company raised a $4.1 million seed round led by Costanoa Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator and Seguin Ventures.

As of available information, Midship has approximately three employees and operates in the business-to-business finance and accounting sector, headquartered in San Francisco.