Funding

OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger Invests Into Austrian RegTech Startup signteq

co-written by newsrooms.ai16. September 2026, 15:00

Signteq founder Simon Schnabl & Peter Steinberger. © Signteq / P. Steinberger

Vienna-based RegTech signteq has just closed a seven-figure funding round. The most prominent name among its new backers is Peter Steinberger. The Austrian software entrepreneur founded PSPDFKit and more recently made headlines with the open-source project OpenClaw. Earlier this year, he joined OpenAI, as Trending Topics reported.

Steinberger is joined by Runtastic co-founder René Giretzlehner, Franz-Mayr-Melnhof-Saurau Beteiligungs GmbH and other investors. Compass-Verlag, a shareholder in signteq since 2024, is investing again and increasing its stake. The company did not disclose the exact size of the round or its valuation, though the amount runs into the millions.

Identity Verification, Compliance and Signatures in One Platform

Founded in Vienna in 2019 and led by Simon Schnabl, signteq brings together processes that many companies still handle through separate providers: digital identity verification, KYC and KYB checks, screening against PEP and sanctions lists, and qualified electronic signatures. Each module can be used on its own or combined into a complete digital onboarding flow.

Through a network of identity and trust service providers as well as national eID systems, companies can cover different procedures and markets via a single integration. According to signteq, all data is processed within the EU, and its identification procedure has been audited against the European standard ETSI TS 119 461 v2.

“Digital identity has long since become core infrastructure for digital business models. What we have built in Austria together with banks, insurers, technology companies and the public sector, we are now scaling internationally, with Europe as a strong starting point,” says founder and CEO Simon Schnabl.

Customers Across Banking, Fintech and the Public Sector

signteq’s customers include companies from the Raiffeisen Banking Group, BAWAG, BTV, BKS Bank and Wüstenrot. Beyond traditional banking, digital wealth manager froots, crowdinvesting platform Conda and crypto companies Cryptonow and WhiteBIT rely on its technology. Biogena used it to onboard investors for its share offering. In the public sector, signteq won a tender from Wiener Wohnen, Europe’s largest municipal housing management company.

Outside Austria, the platform is used in markets including Germany, Switzerland and several countries in Southeastern and Eastern Europe, according to the company. The fresh capital will fund further expansion, with an initial focus on Germany and Switzerland.

EUDI Wallet and New Regulation as Tailwinds

signteq is counting on tailwinds from the European Digital Identity Wallet. By the end of 2026, every EU member state must provide at least one such wallet, allowing citizens to prove their identity digitally and share verified credentials. signteq is integrating the wallet into its platform as an additional component, so companies can adopt wallet-based processes without rebuilding their existing KYC, AML and onboarding workflows. One use case is privacy-preserving proofs, such as confirming that a person is of legal age without sharing any further personal data.

On top of that come eIDAS 2.0 and the EU’s Anti-Money Laundering Regulation (AMLR), which will largely apply from July 2027. Both raise the pressure on regulated companies to tie digital identity and compliance more closely together.

Know Your Agent: Identity for AI Agents

Part of the new funding will go into a new business line called Know Your Agent (KYA). The idea: as AI agents increasingly prepare purchases, trigger payments or execute contracts on their own, companies need to know which agent is acting, on whose behalf, with what permissions and who is ultimately accountable. signteq plans to build infrastructure that makes the identity, mandate and authorization of agents verifiable, primarily for financial institutions, enterprises and public authorities.

“Today, companies need to know who their customer is. Tomorrow, they will also need to know which AI agent is acting for whom, what it is authorized to do and who is responsible for it. That is exactly what we are building Know Your Agent for,” Schnabl says.

This is where Steinberger comes in. With OpenClaw, he created one of the best-known open-source projects for personal AI agents, which drew millions of visitors within a short time. He is also an experienced business angel who has backed several startups in the past, including the PropTech reebuild alongside Hansi Hansmann. His investment in signteq links two fields that are increasingly converging: digital identity and autonomous AI agents.