Why Ontic
A lot of companies are selling “AI governance.” Most of them are solving a different problem than we are. Some of them are solving a problem that doesn’t exist the way they think it does. Here’s an honest comparison.
What each approach actually does
| Approach | What it solves | What it doesn’t | What breaks |
|---|---|---|---|
| RAG | Gives the model better context | Check whether the answer is supported by evidence | Model sounds confident. Answer is still wrong. Customer acts on it. |
| RLHF | Trains the model to cooperate | Guarantee it will — training is probabilistic, not deterministic | Model cooperates — until it doesn’t. You find out from a user report. |
| Guardrails | Filters output after the model speaks | Prevent someone from acting on the claim before the filter catches it | Filter catches it after the response exists. Someone may have already seen it. |
| Monitoring | Tells you what happened | Stop it from happening | Dashboard shows the failure. After the damage. |
| Ontic | Checks claims against real data before they get out | Fix the model. (The model isn’t the problem.) | Nothing — the claim never gets out. |
Every other approach lets the claim exist first. We answer one question before it gets out: does the evidence exist? If not, the claim doesn’t get through.
We govern what you already run
No rip-and-replace. Ontic layers governance onto the stack you’ve already chosen — from frontier APIs to air-gapped appliances.
Base Model
Latest GPT/Claude → SLMs / Quantized Models
Retrieval Stack
Provider Browsing → LanceDB, Qdrant, FAISS
Identity (IAM)
Google, Microsoft → CAC, YubiKey, Biometrics
Policy Engine
Provider Moderation → Open Policy Agent — OPA
Adversarial Defense
"Report Abuse" button → NIST AI RMF Standards
Infrastructure
Shared GPU Fleet → Nvidia IGX, Dell XR Servers
Cost Model
Per User / Month → Hardware + Seat License
Compliance
Terms of Service → Authority to Operate.
When you don’t need Ontic
If your AI is writing internal drafts, brainstorming, or doing anything where a human always reviews before acting — you don’t need us. We’re built for when the output goes directly to someone who might act on it. If nobody acts on it, governance is overhead.