Vaudit Targets Ad Budget Waste with $7.3M for AI Audit Platform

In the past year, Vaudit claims to have uncovered overcharges of up to 30% on digital ad campaigns. In an industry where U.S. ad fraud losses exceeded $28 billion last year, the San Francisco-based startup says that detailed billing audits will be a central pillar of digital media accountability.

Founded by Michael Hahn, Vaudit, recently rebranded from BlokID, raised a $7.3 million seed round led by Mucker Capital, with participation from AVV, AppWorks, Plug and Play, and Kyber Knight. The startup now supports more than 1,000 customers globally, including enterprise accounts like HP, Panasonic, and Volkswagen, and says it is currently auditing over $150 million in annualized digital ad spend.

Shifting Focus from Traffic Quality to Billing Accuracy

Hahn, an adtech veteran, launched the company to address what he viewed as a blind spot in the advertising industry: actual billing. “The online advertising industry has normalized waste and fraud for far too long, with clicks that don’t track, campaigns that overspend, and billing that goes unverified,” he said in a statement.

Vaudit claims a system that uses AI to continuously scan ad billing records, detect anomalies, and generate structured audit reports. The platform automates tasks that would traditionally require manual reconciliation, including the classification of traffic quality, compliance with ad platform billing rules, and the identification of charge discrepancies. The company says it is currently developing agentic workflows that will allow its AI to not only surface anomalies but take predefined actions, such as initiating refunds or pausing spend without human intervention.