Compliance is something that no one ever wants and everybody hates. Not a single founder wakes up in the morning thinking to themselves: "oh I wish I could make my company XYZ-123 compliant!"
Thus providing compliance is really just paying someone to shift responsibility.
The regulator can ask whether you are compliant. You can present certificate from Delve or someone else and that's the end of it.
When I worked in cybersecurity I had a similar realization. No one cared about security posture. They cared about insurance policies. People hired us to shift blame instead of improve security posture. this is not terribly different
I've gone through this process and is this not a failure from the institute that are giving away these certifications for a fee without any due diligence?
intermediaries like delve have only amplified this failure.
it was obvious to anyone who was involved in this industry that, all of this is just security theatre with nothing really to back it up.
We were actually looking at it as well recently (we're using Drata). I was thinking "Cool, this looks like the next cool step forward". The claims didn't sound out of the world in my ears.
Every time an issue like this appears I wonder how many more undiscovered frauds are out there.
There is a lot of serious allegations in here. But some of these complaints apply to most SOC 2 compliance services. For example: it points out that Delve provides pre-filled documents and encourages you to accept them as is. In my experience that is typical. I have seen companies just rubber stamp pre-created documents that describe IT processes that do not accurately reflect actual policy because the MBA[1] running the project didn't want to pull in IT and had no idea what any of it meant.
[1] No offense to MBA, just using it as a placeholder for: business stakeholder with no IT background.
Delve did not even try to fake the reports well. They could have used AI tooling to write somewhat plausible Assertions of Management, but they just dropped in clear form submissions to the reports they provided. Here is an example from Cluely:
> We have prepared the accompanying description of Cluely, Inc., system titled "Cluely is a desktop AI assistant to give you answers in real-time, when you need it." throughout the period June 27, 2025 - September 27, 2025(description), based on the criteria set forth in the Description Criteria DC Section 200 2018 Description Criteria for a Description of a Service Organization’s System in a SOC 2 Report (description criteria).
> The description is intended to provide users with information about the "Cluely is a desktop AI assistant to give you answers in real-time, when you need it." that may be useful when assessing the risks arising from interactions with Cluely, Inc. system, particularly information about the suitability of design and operating effectiveness of Cluely, Inc. controls to meet the criteria related to Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality and Privacy set forth in TSP Section 100, 2017 Trust Services Principles and Criteria for Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality and Privacy (applicable trust services criteria).
I mean, just re-read this sentence:
> The description is intended to provide users with information about the "Cluely is a desktop AI assistant to give you answers in real-time, when you need it." that may be useful
It makes no sense at all.
Someone implemented the code to automate this report mill, and didn't think to even smooth it out with an LLM! There was clear intent here.
To imagine that an auditor reviewed and stamped this as a coherent body of work beggars belief.
Notice how none of Delve's affiliates on X are posting anything after that Substack post. Probably their lawyers told them not to say anything further.
What does that tell you about the scam that was unveiled?
The only thing it tells us is that they have received competent legal advice. Any counsel is going to tell you to shut up regardless of whether you are in the right or wrong.
Cluely did the ChatGPT wrapper to cheat on interviews then sold the customer data to recruiters. The whole company promise is a scam, and useless since we have LLMs.
HockeyStack held contests for people to win cars etc and never delivered. They also lied about having revenues and a product when they had nothing built. Along with Greptile they were doing 7day weeks of unpaid labor from “trial periods”.
This seems like a hit job by a competitor. Really ruthless.
> Two months ago, an email went out to a few hundred Delve clients informing them that Delve had leaked their audit reports, alongside other confidential information, through a Google spreadsheet that was publicly accessible.
Who leaked the audit reports? Who sent this email? Who is taking the time to write this analysis and kill the company?
In my opinion, the majority of the points in the article are no news. A compliance saas that offers templates for policies, all of them do. The AI is a chatbot, well who thought.
I think the main point is the collusion between delve and the auditors. Is the evidence for that clear?
The key problem is the audits and the auditors. I have independently verified for our vendors that they have the same templated SOC2 as all of the leaked reports, which is concerning because that shows the auditors did not actually validate the controls.
SOC2 is supposed to give you an INDEPENDENT evaluation of the compliance of a company "are they doing what they say they are"
If the SOC2 report is just a pre-populated template, it is meaningless.
It doesn't really matter the motivation of the "DeepDelver" - this has implications across all companies that rely on these vendors that have been "assessed" by Delve.
Hit piece or not, the blatantly fraudulent behavior displayed by Delve is reprehensible.
And they didn't even try. Read this management assertion for one of the (known) affected companies:
> We have prepared the accompanying description of Cluely, Inc., system titled "Cluely is a desktop AI assistant to give you answers in real-time, when you need it." throughout the period June 27, 2025 - September 27, 2025(description), based on the criteria set forth in the Description Criteria DC Section 200 2018 Description Criteria for a Description of a Service Organization’s System in a SOC 2 Report (description criteria).
> The description is intended to provide users with information about the "Cluely is a desktop AI assistant to give you answers in real-time, when you need it." that may be useful when assessing the risks arising from interactions with Cluely, Inc. system, particularly information about the suitability of design and operating effectiveness of Cluely, Inc. controls to meet the criteria related to Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality and Privacy set forth in TSP Section 100, 2017 Trust Services Principles and Criteria for Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality and Privacy (applicable trust services criteria).
It's a juicy story to talk about that hits a lot of checkboxes that make it viral --
1. the hustle culture they promoted online was gross
2. they followed the 30u30 Forbes pattern like Liz Holmes, FTX, etc.
3. they're a YC co, so their's plenty of popular voices supporting them
The 3rd isn't to slight the program but folks definitely slam any companies that seem to be in the moral gray area as a proof the program is nihilistic and a net negative. People like to shove mistakes in the face of "successful" folks like investors/VCs.
Finally, the security and compliance community is litigious by their nature and this startup, in general, was a net negative for a lot of people who do fractional / consulting work in security.
What's more surprising to me, as a layperson, is that I found this out and investigated their shady auditor network in late December. It didn't take much work.
Insight Partners invested in a 32 MILLION DOLLAR ROUND without any apparent shred of due diligence. What does that say about the VC market writ large?
Compliance is something that no one ever wants and everybody hates. Not a single founder wakes up in the morning thinking to themselves: "oh I wish I could make my company XYZ-123 compliant!"
Thus providing compliance is really just paying someone to shift responsibility.
The regulator can ask whether you are compliant. You can present certificate from Delve or someone else and that's the end of it.
When I worked in cybersecurity I had a similar realization. No one cared about security posture. They cared about insurance policies. People hired us to shift blame instead of improve security posture. this is not terribly different
I've gone through this process and is this not a failure from the institute that are giving away these certifications for a fee without any due diligence?
intermediaries like delve have only amplified this failure.
it was obvious to anyone who was involved in this industry that, all of this is just security theatre with nothing really to back it up.
Love the depth of this post.
We were actually looking at it as well recently (we're using Drata). I was thinking "Cool, this looks like the next cool step forward". The claims didn't sound out of the world in my ears.
Every time an issue like this appears I wonder how many more undiscovered frauds are out there.
I've been talking about this for a while now. For those of you thinking... Oh, I use a "good" company... think otherwise.
https://x.com/HotAisle/status/1946302651383329081
The whole thing is a racket.
There is a lot of serious allegations in here. But some of these complaints apply to most SOC 2 compliance services. For example: it points out that Delve provides pre-filled documents and encourages you to accept them as is. In my experience that is typical. I have seen companies just rubber stamp pre-created documents that describe IT processes that do not accurately reflect actual policy because the MBA[1] running the project didn't want to pull in IT and had no idea what any of it meant.
[1] No offense to MBA, just using it as a placeholder for: business stakeholder with no IT background.
Delve did not even try to fake the reports well. They could have used AI tooling to write somewhat plausible Assertions of Management, but they just dropped in clear form submissions to the reports they provided. Here is an example from Cluely:
> We have prepared the accompanying description of Cluely, Inc., system titled "Cluely is a desktop AI assistant to give you answers in real-time, when you need it." throughout the period June 27, 2025 - September 27, 2025(description), based on the criteria set forth in the Description Criteria DC Section 200 2018 Description Criteria for a Description of a Service Organization’s System in a SOC 2 Report (description criteria).
> The description is intended to provide users with information about the "Cluely is a desktop AI assistant to give you answers in real-time, when you need it." that may be useful when assessing the risks arising from interactions with Cluely, Inc. system, particularly information about the suitability of design and operating effectiveness of Cluely, Inc. controls to meet the criteria related to Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality and Privacy set forth in TSP Section 100, 2017 Trust Services Principles and Criteria for Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality and Privacy (applicable trust services criteria).
I mean, just re-read this sentence:
> The description is intended to provide users with information about the "Cluely is a desktop AI assistant to give you answers in real-time, when you need it." that may be useful
It makes no sense at all.
Someone implemented the code to automate this report mill, and didn't think to even smooth it out with an LLM! There was clear intent here.
To imagine that an auditor reviewed and stamped this as a coherent body of work beggars belief.
wow you guys really delved into this
Notice how none of Delve's affiliates on X are posting anything after that Substack post. Probably their lawyers told them not to say anything further.
What does that tell you about the scam that was unveiled?
Not good.
The only thing it tells us is that they have received competent legal advice. Any counsel is going to tell you to shut up regardless of whether you are in the right or wrong.
wow, cannot imagine now companies that tool the compliance, and get deals just to be fake. uff...
Well now we know how Cluely and friends can claim to be SOC2 compliant.
Cluely and HockeyStack are scam companies too.
Cluely did the ChatGPT wrapper to cheat on interviews then sold the customer data to recruiters. The whole company promise is a scam, and useless since we have LLMs.
HockeyStack held contests for people to win cars etc and never delivered. They also lied about having revenues and a product when they had nothing built. Along with Greptile they were doing 7day weeks of unpaid labor from “trial periods”.
Scams all around.
Wait what's the greptile story?
This seems like a hit job by a competitor. Really ruthless.
> Two months ago, an email went out to a few hundred Delve clients informing them that Delve had leaked their audit reports, alongside other confidential information, through a Google spreadsheet that was publicly accessible.
Who leaked the audit reports? Who sent this email? Who is taking the time to write this analysis and kill the company?
In my opinion, the majority of the points in the article are no news. A compliance saas that offers templates for policies, all of them do. The AI is a chatbot, well who thought.
I think the main point is the collusion between delve and the auditors. Is the evidence for that clear?
The key problem is the audits and the auditors. I have independently verified for our vendors that they have the same templated SOC2 as all of the leaked reports, which is concerning because that shows the auditors did not actually validate the controls.
SOC2 is supposed to give you an INDEPENDENT evaluation of the compliance of a company "are they doing what they say they are"
If the SOC2 report is just a pre-populated template, it is meaningless.
It doesn't really matter the motivation of the "DeepDelver" - this has implications across all companies that rely on these vendors that have been "assessed" by Delve.
Hit piece or not, the blatantly fraudulent behavior displayed by Delve is reprehensible.
And they didn't even try. Read this management assertion for one of the (known) affected companies:
> We have prepared the accompanying description of Cluely, Inc., system titled "Cluely is a desktop AI assistant to give you answers in real-time, when you need it." throughout the period June 27, 2025 - September 27, 2025(description), based on the criteria set forth in the Description Criteria DC Section 200 2018 Description Criteria for a Description of a Service Organization’s System in a SOC 2 Report (description criteria).
> The description is intended to provide users with information about the "Cluely is a desktop AI assistant to give you answers in real-time, when you need it." that may be useful when assessing the risks arising from interactions with Cluely, Inc. system, particularly information about the suitability of design and operating effectiveness of Cluely, Inc. controls to meet the criteria related to Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality and Privacy set forth in TSP Section 100, 2017 Trust Services Principles and Criteria for Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality and Privacy (applicable trust services criteria).
There's no need for some conspiracy.
It's a juicy story to talk about that hits a lot of checkboxes that make it viral --
The 3rd isn't to slight the program but folks definitely slam any companies that seem to be in the moral gray area as a proof the program is nihilistic and a net negative. People like to shove mistakes in the face of "successful" folks like investors/VCs.Finally, the security and compliance community is litigious by their nature and this startup, in general, was a net negative for a lot of people who do fractional / consulting work in security.
What's more surprising to me, as a layperson, is that I found this out and investigated their shady auditor network in late December. It didn't take much work.
Insight Partners invested in a 32 MILLION DOLLAR ROUND without any apparent shred of due diligence. What does that say about the VC market writ large?