BoardLens FAQ

What is BoardLens?

BoardLens is an AI intelligence layer built for board work. It connects company history, board materials, previous decisions and commitments with relevant market signals, governance intelligence and best practices. Instead of treating every board meeting as a new snapshot, BoardLens carries context across cycles, so directors can see important changes earlier, focus attention where it matters most and reduce the risk of missing what matters, in a secure workspace where your data is never used to train AI models.

What is AI board intelligence?

AI board intelligence is the use of AI to read, analyse and reason over board materials, rather than only store and distribute them. It turns dense board decks into cited briefs, flags what changed since last quarter, tracks whether management kept its commitments, and gives directors a single view across every board they serve. BoardLens is an AI board intelligence platform built for the person in the seat.

Is BoardLens a board portal?

Yes, and more. BoardLens does what a board portal does, scheduling meetings, running votes and distributing documents, so it can run your board end to end. What sets it apart is the AI layer on top: it reads and analyses the materials into cited briefs, tracks commitments, and gives cross-board intelligence. It is a board portal and an AI analyst in one.

How is BoardLens different from Diligent, Board Intelligence or OnBoard?

Tools like Diligent, Board Intelligence and OnBoard focus on the portal basics: meetings, voting and document distribution. BoardLens does all of that too, but it does not stop at file storage. It adds the AI analysis that makes board meetings more effective and intelligent, turning board materials into cited briefs, flagging what changed, tracking commitments and follow-ups, and giving one view across every board and portfolio company. It works both for the individual director in the seat and for whole boards.

See the full comparisons: BoardLens vs Diligent, OnBoard, Board Intelligence and more →

Who is BoardLens for?

BoardLens is built both for the people in the seat and for whole boards: independent board directors, PE and VC investors on portfolio-company boards, family officers and fund partners, CEOs preparing for their board, and corporate and company boards running their meetings on it. Funds and family offices also use it for post-investment portfolio monitoring across their portfolio-company boards.

How does BoardLens help CEOs and directors prepare board materials?

BoardLens reads a full board deck and turns a thousand pages into a clear, cited brief, so you can see the signal, spot what changed since last quarter, and walk in with the sharp questions a board will ask. It also drafts follow-ups from the minutes and tracks the commitments made in the room.

Does BoardLens track board commitments and follow-ups?

Yes. BoardLens tracks the commitments management makes and whether they are executed, keeps a governance calendar of meetings, covenants and reporting deadlines, and can draft follow-up emails straight from your minutes or transcripts, so nothing agreed in the room is lost.

Can I use BoardLens across several boards or a whole portfolio?

Yes. BoardLens gives you one secure workspace across every board you serve, while keeping each company's information completely separate. For funds and family offices, it supports post-investment portfolio monitoring and value creation across every portfolio-company board.

How is BoardLens different from ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a powerful general-purpose AI tool. BoardLens is purpose-built for the continuity, context and governance requirements of board work. BoardLens understands the company across meetings: it connects new board materials with previous decisions, commitments and company history, and brings in relevant market signals and governance intelligence. It can also proactively surface developments that matter, instead of waiting for a director to know what to ask. Every factual analysis is grounded in source material, with citations directors can inspect, and BoardLens provides the security, data isolation and auditability expected for sensitive board information.

Why can't I just upload my board deck to ChatGPT?

You can, and for a one-off question that may be useful. The difference appears across meetings. BoardLens remembers the company context, previous decisions and commitments, connects the latest board deck with what came before, and monitors relevant developments outside the company, so you do not have to reconstruct that context each time you start a new conversation. It is also designed specifically for sensitive board information, with source grounding, citations, data isolation and enterprise controls built into the product.

Does BoardLens remember previous meetings?

Yes. Continuity is one of the core differences between BoardLens and a general-purpose AI tool. BoardLens connects board materials across cycles so previous decisions, commitments, follow-ups and company context remain available when the next meeting arrives. The board does not have to reconstruct the company's history from scratch every quarter.

How does BoardLens use outside information?

BoardLens can monitor the external signals that matter to your company, including competitors, customers, regulation, industry developments and sources you choose to follow. You can add companies, websites, forums or specialist sources to a watchlist. BoardLens filters the noise, identifies what is relevant to the company and board context, and can send tailored digests when something worth knowing changes. The differentiator is relevance to this company and this board, not a generic news feed.

Do you train AI models on our board materials?

No. Never. Every AI provider we use (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Mistral) is bound by a signed data processing agreement with an explicit no-training commitment. Your data is used to answer your questions, nothing else. Your compliance team can review every one of these contracts in our Trust Center.

Where is our data stored?

All customer data is stored in AWS in Frankfurt, Germany, encrypted at rest with dedicated keys and in transit via TLS. Nothing is stored on laptops, file-sharing tools or third-party services. AI providers process queries under the DPAs above and do not retain your documents.

How is our data separated from other customers'?

Every record in our database is bound to your organization's tenant ID at the schema level, and every query is scoped to that ID by the application, without exception. One board's data can never appear in another board's results, and this isolation is one of the controls monitored daily as part of our SOC 2 program and enforced by the database itself, independently of application code.

Are you SOC 2 compliant?

Our SOC 2 program reached 100 percent control readiness in July 2026 and we are in the formal audit observation window, with the independent attestation report expected in October. In the meantime our systems are monitored continuously by Drata, an independent compliance platform, and prospective customers can see our live control status in the Trust Center.

Are you GDPR compliant?

BoardLens was built for GDPR from the start: records of processing, a data protection impact assessment for document analysis, data subject rights procedures, a breach notification procedure, and a transfers register covering every US subprocessor. All documentation is available for review.

What happens if the AI hallucinates?

This is the core of how BoardLens is engineered. Every factual claim must carry a citation to a specific document and page, enforced at the database level. Click any claim and the source page opens next to it. Outputs that fail validation get one automated correction attempt and are otherwise rejected, never silently shown. Every release is gated on automated citation verification against a regression test set, and output quality is judged by an AI from a different vendor, so no model evaluates its own work.

What happens if something goes wrong? Do you have a kill switch?

Yes. We can revoke all active sessions centrally, take the platform fully offline in under 1 minute at a single control point, and disable all AI processing independently of the rest of the system, all while preserving complete forensic logs. Threat detection runs in every AWS region worldwide and alerts a human within minutes. Customers can also irreversibly delete their data at any time.

How is the platform itself secured?

No servers to break into: the platform runs on immutable containers with no remote access, rebuilt from scratch on every release. A web application firewall, network-level port blocking, encrypted storage, and secrets held in a vault with database credentials that rotate automatically every week. Every code change passes automated security analysis and dependency scanning before release.

Do you do penetration testing?

Yes. An independent security firm performs an annual penetration test, and the latest report is available under NDA via the Trust Center. Security testing is also continuous and automated: static analysis on every change, dependency scanning, and daily independent monitoring of all controls.

How do you govern your own AI?

The same way we help boards govern theirs. Every AI call is logged with the model used, the exact prompt version and its cost, creating a complete audit trail of every AI decision the platform has ever made. Prompts are versioned and tracked like policies. Nothing the AI produces is unaccountable.

Can our security team verify any of this?

Yes, that's the point. Our Trust Center gives your IT, security or compliance team direct access to our subprocessor contracts, live compliance monitoring status, and security documentation.

Can we use our own AI keys (BYOK)? Are you ISO 27001 certified?

Both are on the enterprise roadmap. Because all AI calls flow through a single governed router, per-customer model keys are architecturally straightforward, and our SOC 2 control set substantially maps to ISO 27001. Talk to us if either is a requirement.

How much does BoardLens cost? Is there a free version?

BoardLens has a free tier, with paid plans for more companies and usage. You can start free without a credit card, and a demo company is already set up so you can explore it before uploading your own materials. See the pricing page for current plans.

How do I get started with BoardLens?

Start free at boardlens.ai. No credit card is required, and a demo company is preloaded so you can try the analysis, briefs and commitment tracking before adding your own board.