Runtime vs Bretton AI: AI Agents for Compliance and Ops

Feature	Runtime	Bretton AI
What it is	Agent harness for every payment team	AI agents for financial crime compliance
Teams covered	Compliance, risk, payment ops, finance, support, onboarding	AML, KYC, sanctions, and fraud
Financial crime depth	You build agents from your SOPs	Purpose-built agents and regulatory guidance
Model risk management	Evals on your own resolved cases	Built-in trust infrastructure and evaluation
Managed operations option	Software your team runs, with FDE support	Managed services that run compliance ops for you
Shared memory across teams	One governed memory for every team	Within financial crime operations
Runs in your cloud	Yes, or fully self-hosted	Vendor platform
Bring your own models	Any model, including local open models	Vendor-managed
Approvals on money movement	Built in, from Slack, Teams, or the dashboard	Not the focus

Bretton AI is the better fit when financial crime compliance (KYC, KYB, AML, sanctions) is the only scope, or when you want a vendor to run that work for you. Runtime is the better fit when you want your own team running agents across compliance and every other team that touches a transaction, in your own cloud with your own models. Runtime is the AI agent harness for payment and fintech teams.

Bretton AI and Runtime at a glance

Bretton AI (formerly Greenlite) builds AI agents for financial crime operations. Its agents handle KYC and KYB reviews, AML and sanctions investigations, and ongoing monitoring, built on what it calls Trust Infrastructure: regulatory guidance, model risk management, and continuous evaluation. Banks regulated by the OCC, FDIC, and Federal Reserve use it, along with platforms like Robinhood, Mercury, and Gusto. In 2026 it raised a $75M Series B and launched managed services, where its own team runs compliance operations for customers.

Runtime is an agent harness for payment and fintech operations. From payment ops to risk, compliance, and support, anyone on the team can build agents that work their queues on their own computers inside your cloud, called from Slack, Teams, email, SMS, or voice, with approvals and a full audit trail.

How they differ

Scope: financial crime or the whole transaction

Bretton covers the financial crime part of a case deeply. Runtime is built for every team the case touches, so compliance, risk, payment ops, finance, and support work on the same platform and the same record.

Software your team runs, not a service

Bretton offers managed services where its team runs compliance operations. Runtime is harness plus FDE, not a service disguised as software: a forward-deployed engineer with a payments and risk background maps your processes, builds the first agents with your team, and trains your admins. Your people use it every day and keep using it after the FDE leaves.

Your cloud, your models, your record

Runtime agent computers run in your AWS, GCP, or Azure account, or fully self-hosted, with any model you choose. Every run is recorded end to end, so the record your sponsor bank or examiner asks for stays with you.

Where Bretton AI is stronger

Financial crime depth. Purpose-built agents for KYC, KYB, AML, sanctions, and monitoring.
Model risk management included. Regulatory guidance and continuous evaluation as part of its Trust Infrastructure.
Bank-grade references. Used by banks regulated by the OCC, FDIC, and Federal Reserve.
Managed services. Its team can run compliance operations for you.

Where Runtime enters the picture

An AML alert or a sanctions hit rarely stays inside compliance. Take an outbound payout held on a possible sanctions match: support gets the ticket from the merchant, payment ops traces where the payout sits with the processor, finance sees a recon break, and compliance reviews the match. Today each team investigates it separately in different tools. On Runtime it is one investigation with one record, and when compliance clears the match, the release waits for a person to approve it.

Runtime can land exactly where Bretton does, on one sharp compliance queue like KYB reviews or alert triage. Because every agent shares one harness and one memory, the next agent for onboarding, payment ops, or finance starts with that context. Rain replaced $250k in vendor spend with Runtime.

No single vendor to depend on. Agents run in your AWS, GCP, or Azure account or fully self-hosted, on the sandbox provider you choose with fallbacks, and on any model (Claude, GPT, Gemini, or open-weight models in your cloud for PII work), with routing across Claude Code, Codex, and OpenCode.
Guardrails you set. Agents start read-only, case decisions, payout releases, and replies to a sponsor bank wait for approval, credentials are masked, SSNs and card numbers are stripped from prompts and logs, RBAC controls access, and every run is recorded.
Built for teams. Compliance, risk, onboarding, payment ops, finance, and support share agents, templates, and one memory, so an RFI answered once is context for the next one.
An engineer, not an account executive. A forward-deployed AI engineer with a payments and risk background (Hulu's payments team at Disney, Finix, Modern Treasury, BlackRock) builds the first agents with your team and trains your admins, so your people run it after the FDE leaves.

New agent

Create a banking ops agent that handles RFIs, hold-harmless requests, and returns of funds from our partner bank, verifies against our ledger, and drafts replies for my approval.

Describe the agent you want

Agent ready

bank-ops-agent

Tools picked from your prompt

EmailLedgerSFTPMastercard

Anyone on the team describes the work in plain English and attaches the SOP. Runtime builds the agent and gives it its own computer.

Which should you choose

Choose Bretton AI if

Financial crime compliance (AML, KYC, sanctions) is the only scope
You want purpose-built compliance agents with model risk management included
You'd rather have a vendor run compliance operations for you
Your regulator relationship benefits from a specialist compliance vendor

Choose Runtime if

You want compliance, risk, payment ops, finance, and support on one platform
Your own team should own and run the agents
Data and models have to stay in your cloud
You need approvals on money movement and an audit trail you keep

See Runtime on your busiest queue

Bring one SOP. A forward-deployed AI engineer builds the first agent with your team, inside your cloud.

Book a demo

Frequently asked questions

What is Bretton AI?

Bretton AI, formerly Greenlite, builds AI agents for financial crime operations: KYC and KYB reviews, AML and sanctions investigations, and ongoing monitoring. In 2026 it raised a $75M Series B and launched managed services that run compliance operations for customers.

Is Bretton AI or Runtime better for a fintech compliance team?

If financial crime compliance is the only scope, or you want a vendor to run it for you, Bretton AI is a strong fit. If you want your own team running agents across compliance, risk, payment ops, finance, and support, in your own cloud, Runtime is the better fit.

Can Bretton AI run in my own cloud?

Bretton AI runs as a vendor platform with vendor-managed models. Runtime runs agent computers in your AWS, GCP, or Azure account, or fully self-hosted, and lets you bring any model, including open-weight models in your cloud.

What is the best Bretton AI alternative for payment companies?

Payment companies that want one platform for every team that touches a transaction, with approvals on money movement and an audit trail they own, choose Runtime. Runtime can start with a compliance use case and expand from there.

Where does Runtime fit next to Bretton AI?

Bretton AI covers financial crime compliance. Runtime is the AI agent harness for payment and fintech teams: compliance can start there too, and the same platform carries the case to payment ops, finance, risk, and support, with one record of the investigation in your own cloud.