Breaking the Mold: Announcing the Winners of the 2025 GRC Innovation Awards
Recognizing those who dare to rethink Governance, Risk Management & Compliance
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”
The 2025 GRC Innovation Awards are here — and they are anything but ordinary.
The GRC Innovation Awards recognize truly revolutionary advances in the governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC) space. These are not “best in class” awards. They are not for those who simply built a better mousetrap, or who outpaced their competitors on speed, scale, or configurability. These awards are for the bold. For the different. For those who are reshaping the way GRC is experienced, delivered, and understood.
This year, competition was fierce. There were hundreds of submissions. Many submitted multiple nominations, with one vendor submitting eight. But while the volume of nominations was high, only a select few met the stringent criteria that define true innovation.
Only 15 winners made the final cut.
What the GRC Innovation Awards Are — and Are Not
To establish clarity, it’s important to understand what these awards represent — and what they don’t.
- They are for paradigm shifts, not incremental improvements.
- They reward creativity and boldness, not simply faster configurations or prettier dashboards.
- They highlight solutions that are re-architecting the GRC experience, not just competing on speed, features, or price.
These awards are not:
- For claiming “best feature set” over the competition
- For boasting faster time-to-value or easier implementation
- For being more configurable or “agile” (which, ironically, was the most common — and automatically disqualified — claim in this year’s submissions)
Instead, the GRC Innovation Awards celebrate game-changing ideas — solutions that break boundaries, challenge norms, and rethink what’s possible in GRC. Think Apple in its prime: a complete reimagining of form and function. Not just simplicity for its own sake, but simplicity that delivers context, clarity, and connection when and where it’s needed.
The Common Pitfall: Mistaking “Better” for “Innovative”
This year saw a flood of nominations that confused innovation with improvement. Submissions that touted speed, configurability, or competitive advantages — while valuable — were not enough.
Many focused on arguing how they have better features. Those are precisely the sorts of entries that should be saved for the upcoming 2026 GRC Best in Class Awards, which will open for nominations in November 2025. Those awards honor excellence within defined categories.
The Innovation Awards, on the other hand, are about defiance. Defying the expected. Disrupting the routine. Doing GRC differently.
A Process Built on Rigor and Relevance
Nominations for the 2025 awards closed at midnight CDT on January 31st, 2025. From there, the GRC 20/20 evaluation team conducted a rigorous review process throughout February:
- Every submission was screened for originality, substance, and alignment with the true meaning of innovation.
- Submissions that failed to differentiate beyond buzzwords were quietly dismissed.
- Finalists were selected for deeper evaluation.
- Winners were selected.
The result? A carefully curated list of 15 pioneering solutions that represent the future of GRC.
The 2025 GRC Innovation Award Winners
The following solutions have been selected as winners of the 2025 GRC Innovation Awards, listed alphabetically (follows the links in each for all the great detail . . .
- Archer. Archer has been awarded a 2025 GRC Innovation Award in the category of Risk & Resilience Management for its groundbreaking Archer Insight platform, which redefines enterprise risk management through accessible, quantitative decision intelligence.
- AuditBoard. AuditBoard has been awarded a 2025 GRC Innovation Award in the category of Audit Management, Analytics & Assurance for redefining the audit lifecycle through AI, analytics, and an integrated Connected Risk platform.
- CoreStream GRC. CoreStream GRC has been awarded a 2025 GRC Innovation Award in the Enterprise Integrated GRC Architecture & Platforms category for its modular, no-code platform that redefines what flexible, scalable, and intuitive GRC architecture can be.
- Corlytics. Corlytics has been awarded a 2025 GRC Innovation Award in the Compliance & RegTech category for its Regulatory Risk Intelligence Platform—an end-to-end solution that redefines compliance as an orchestrated, strategic function in line with the GRC 7.0 vision of GRC Orchestrate.
- Coverbase. Coverbase has been awarded a 2025 GRC Innovation Award in the category of Third-Party Risk Management for its groundbreaking Coverbase Copilot solution, a next-generation TPRM platform built on agentic AI.
- Diligent. Diligent has been awarded a 2025 GRC Innovation Award in the category of Legal GRC Management Solutions for its Board & Leadership Collaboration platform—a purpose-built solution that redefines governance as a dynamic, decision-driven command center.
- GAN Integrity. GAN Integrity has been awarded a 2025 GRC Innovation Award in the category of Third-Party GRC/Risk Management Solutions for its groundbreaking Integrity Identify™ platform, which reimagines third-party risk management through AI-powered, continuous oversight.
- iluminr. iluminr has been awarded a 2025 GRC Innovation Award in the Risk & Resilience Management Solutions for transforming how organizations build resilience through its groundbreaking Microsimulations.
- MindBridge. MindBridge has been awarded a 2025 GRC Innovation Award in the category of Finance GRC Management for transforming how financial risk is monitored, understood, and governed through continuous AI-powered oversight.
- OPTIMAS.AI. OPTIMAS.AI Inc has been awarded a 2025 GRC Innovation Award in the category of Digital Risk & Resilience Management for its groundbreaking solution: Autonomous Control Validation & Monitoring® (ACVM).
- ReadiNow. ReadiNow has been awarded a 2025 GRC Innovation Award in the category of Enterprise Integrated GRC Architecture & Platforms for pioneering the use of Agentic AI within its no-code platform—ushering in a new era of GRC 7.0: GRC Orchestrate.
- Signal AI. Signal AI has been named a 2025 GRC Innovation Award winner in the Risk & Resilience Management for its pioneering work in transforming external risk intelligence into actionable, strategic foresight.
- ValidMind. ValidMind has been awarded a 2025 GRC Innovation Award in the category of AI Governance, Risk Management & Compliance (AI GRC) for redefining model risk management in the age of AI and Generative AI.
- Vault Platform (a Diligent brand). Vault Platform has been awarded a 2025 GRC Innovation Award in the category of Compliance & Ethics Management for transforming outdated hotline models into a modern, mobile-first system of integrity intelligence.
- Verterim. Verterim has been awarded a 2025 GRC Innovation Award in the GRC Management Solutions for its groundbreaking GRC Mapper: a domain-specific AI solution that radically accelerates and improves the accuracy of GRC data mapping across frameworks, policies, controls, risks, contracts, vendors, and more.
Innovation Is Just the Beginning
As the GRC landscape continues to evolve, innovation will remain its North Star. In an increasingly interconnected, digital, and AI-driven world, the need for intuitive, responsive, and intelligent GRC solutions has never been greater. The winners of this year’s Innovation Awards are not just improving GRC — they are reinventing it.
To those who submitted and were not selected: keep thinking differently. Keep pushing boundaries. Innovation is a journey, not a destination.
And to those already planning for what’s next, stay tuned for the 2026 GRC Best in Class Awards, which open for nominations this November. That program honors the solutions that deliver excellence at scale — the “best of the best” across the GRC galaxy.
Until then, let us celebrate the innovators who remind us that simplicity, when done right, is the ultimate sophistication— and that risk, indeed, is our business.