E178: Building Safer AI Agents with Portia AI

Open Source Startup Podcast

Emma Burrows is Co-Founder & CTO of Portia AI, the platform to build AI agents in regulated environments. Their open source Python SDK provides a developer framework for predictable and stateful agentic workflows.

Portia AI has raised around $5M from investors including General Catalyst and First Minute Capital.

In this episode, we dig into:

• Why they built an end-to-end platform from agent planning to deployment

• The focus on accuracy as their true north star metric

• Their paid contribution program

• How their found their initial ICP in regulated industries

• Why 2026 will be the year of agents

• Her best fundraising advice (hint: never really stop fundraising)