When there’s money involved, fraud is not far behind. Crypto and neobanks are an especially attractive target for bad actors. But there’s hope for neobanks and cryptocurrency operators, and it comes courtesy of Sardine, described by the company as the first “fraud prevention as a service,” according to its press release.
The company has closed $4.6 million in a seed funding round. The startup says its AI technology is able to aggregate a wealth of data (“millions of data points,” according to the company) about customers that lets it quickly identify fraudulent customers. Sardine’s business customers integrate Sardine’s AI fraud prevention platform via an API or SDK.
A horde of talent has joined the company. For instance, Soups Ranjan, CEO of Sardine, formerly worked at Coinbase as its director of data science and risk. Coinbase’s corporate venture capital arm also participated in the Seed round as well as Dan Romero, a Coinbase alumni.
Other members of the Sardine team come from well-established startups that regularly deal with fraudulent activity, including Revolut, PayPal, Bolt and Uber. Sardine’s ability to recruit talent appears to be a significant reason XYZ Ventures led the seed round. In a prepared statement, founder and managing partner of XYZ Venture Capital Ross Furbini said Sardine is “uniquely suited to super-power both established and emerging fintechs as they battle fraud to scale more quickly.”
Other investors in the round include 11.2 Capital, Village Global, Sweat Equity Ventures (an accelerator that helped launch Sardine), and over 25 angel investors. The company also notes on its website it maintains partnerships with Chainalysis, Blockset, Emailage, Prove, Very Good Security and SentiLink.
In other recent fundraising news, Stripe has raised a massive $600 million funding round at a $95 billion valuation.