Prague’s Resistant AI brings in $16.6 million in GV led round

Resistant AI, a Prague-based startup that helps keep financial services safe from manipulation, fraud, and other miscellaneous and financial crimes, has raised $16.6 million in a Series A funding round. With this new capital, the company plans to build out the products, engineering, and sales teams in order to meet the increasing demand from financial institutions.

Even though the age-old expression states that crime doesn’t pay, apparently in an increasingly automated world, clearly opposite is true.

According to data acquired and revied by Resistant AI:

● 17% of bank statements used for lending applications worldwide are tampered with; ● 11% of UK payslips submitted are altered or forged; ● 15% of company registration certificates submitted when opening a bank account are fakes; ● 9% of utility bills submitted as proof of address worldwide are forged

With these eye-opening statistics in mind, the team behind Cognitive Security, which exited to Cisco in 2013 established Resistant AI with the goal of meeting the demands of today’s financial services customer. This customer, like you and me, expect a lightning-fast, frictionless, and fully digital experience. Needless to say, the only thing that could make this possible is a series of digital automations, and it’s these same automated procedures that nefarious individuals are targeting.

Capable of sophisticated and persistent fraud attacks, financial criminals exploit security loopholes to defraud governments of grants, launder illicit money, and use 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,’ comments CEO Martin Rehak. “That’s the only way we can avoid epidemic fraud, mountains of manual reviews and four-factor authentication on every single online service."

Already in use by a number of banks, insurers, and fintechs, including Payoneer, Twisto, and ThreatMark, Resistant AI protects some 25 million users in Fortune 1,000 companies. It offers clients the ability to protect credit risk scoring models, detect forged documents, uncover new fraud techniques, and increase the recognition of false IDs, amongst a host of additional services.

Resistant AI’s Series A round was led by GV (the VC formerly known as Google Ventures), and saw 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 active in the financial technology and security sectors.