Apate expands scam intelligence push with AI agents for banks and telecoms

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Apate AI scam intelligence

Highlights

Apate raised $8.15 million in August seed funding, bringing total funding to just under $10 million, to expand AI agent deployment and international presence.
Commonwealth Bank of Australia reports a 76% decrease in publicly reported scam losses, while TPG Telecom diverted 590,000 calls to Apate’s AI agents for intelligence gathering.
FBI received over 22,000 complaints of AI-related crimes in 2025 with $893 million in losses, highlighting rising demand for early AI-driven fraud intelligence like Apate’s solution.

Funding, product model and customer use

As reported by TechCrunch, Apate deploys thousands of AI agents across phone calls, messages, email, the web and social platforms to interact directly with fraudsters and gather details such as bank account numbers, crypto wallet addresses, phone numbers, malicious websites and impersonated brands.

The startup says the agents are designed to keep scammers engaged long enough to extract intelligence that institutions usually learn only after a victim has already been defrauded. Customers also get access to an insights portal that tracks scam activity targeting their users, employees, brands and products, and can assign the agents specific missions tied to ongoing fraud investigations.

Apate was founded in 2024 based on research led by founder and chief executive Dali Kaafar at Macquarie University. Co-founder and chief commercial officer Brad Joffe says the company uses both frontier AI models and its own fine-tuned systems, trained on scam conversations and earlier academic research, to power the agents and analyze the resulting data.

Apate raised $8.15 million in seed funding in August from Lobby Capital, OIF Ventures, Investible, Concept Ventures and Baobab Ventures. Joffe says the 20-person company has raised just under $10 million in total and plans to use the latest funding for product development and international expansion, including a London office and a larger presence in the U.S.

Fraud prevention impact and market backdrop

The company’s customer base includes Commonwealth Bank of Australia, TPG Telecom and other Australian utilities, telecom providers and government agencies. Joffe says TPG has diverted nearly 590,000 calls to Apate’s agents, Commonwealth has recorded a 76% drop in publicly reported scam losses, and an unnamed Australian bank has used outbound agents from the startup to disrupt 22 scam campaigns.

The business model reflects growing demand for earlier fraud detection as AI tools become more common in criminal activity. The FBI received more than 22,000 complaints of AI-related crimes in 2025, with losses of about $893 million, including more than $632 million tied to investment scams where fraudsters use AI in conversations and deepfakes to imitate trusted figures.

Apate’s approach builds on the long-running practice of scam-baiting, but automates it at scale for institutional customers. Rather than relying only on number blocking or post-transaction monitoring, the company positions its agents as a way to intercept scam tactics earlier and give clients operational intelligence they can use to update anti-fraud measures.

Our earlier coverage of Wall Street banks’ AI buildout highlighted how lenders are weighing the upside of financing rapid AI infrastructure expansion against growing concerns over credit quality, returns and cybersecurity. It also noted that as AI tools become more autonomous, banks face rising exposure to AI-enabled attacks and operational vulnerabilities even as they pursue productivity gains from the technology.

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