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Resistant AI secures USD16.6m in Series A funding from GV and Index Ventures

Resistant AI, a SaaS-based AI and machine learning security company that protects financial services from manipulation, fraud and financial crime, has secured USD16.6 million in Series A funding.

GV (formerly Google Ventures) led the Series A, with participation from existing investors Index Ventures (led by partner Jan Hammer), Credo Ventures (led by Ondrej Bartos and Vladislav Jez) and Seedcamp, as well as several angel investors specialising in financial technology and security. The funding will be used to meet increasing demand from global financial institutions and to build out Resistant AI’s product, engineering, and sales operations teams beyond Prague, London and New York.

Founded by the team behind Cognitive Security, which was sold to Cisco in 2013, Resistant AI responds to the reality of algorithm-driven security and compliance. Customers today expect financial services to be frictionless, instantaneous and fully digital. Intelligent automation is the answer, but the speed and reduction of human involvement brings its own risks. Criminals find ways to exploit loopholes and design sophisticated and scalable fraud attacks – defrauding governments of grants, laundering illicit money and using stolen identities to illegally obtain loans and credit.

“Our mission is to create an intelligent shield for autonomous financial systems, to protect them against these ever-evolving, ever-smarter attacks,” says Martin Rehak, Resistant AI CEO. ‘That’s the only way we can avoid epidemic fraud, mountains of manual reviews and four-factor authentication on every single online service.”

Resistant AI – which is already protecting a number of banks, insurers and financial technology companies – adds an extra layer of reinforcement to existing checks and monitoring systems. Using sophisticated statistical modelling and machine-learning, it supports clients across the whole customer lifecycle, from the onboarding process through the ongoing continuous relationship. 

Tom Hulme, General Partner at GV, says: “Resistant AI’s founding team has unique expertise in applying AI and machine learning to detect complex and evasive behavior. Early customer traction demonstrates an ability to uncover unknown threats, and reliably categorize and reduce false alerts with transparent, explainable and verifiable detection models.”

Jan Hammer, partner at Index Ventures and Resistant AI board member, says: “Automation in financial services and the application of AI has enabled banks, fintechs, insurance companies and other players to introduce better products and become more efficient. However, it has also resulted in security gaps, opening up automated processes to fraud. Resistant AI is the much needed oversight that can spot fraud and financial crime in its tracks.”

Ondrej Bartos, General Partner at Credo Ventures, says: “The overwhelmingly positive feedback of Resistant AI customers shows that team values matter. Resistant AI’s core values have always been AI and machine learning excellence, trustworthiness and their willingness to go an extra mile for the customer. Their ability to address some of the hardest problems in the fraud and financial crime space proves our strong preference to back the founders of our past portfolio companies.”

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