From left: Tobias Schweiger, Wolfgang Berner | Image credit: Hawk AI
Munich-based Hawk AI, a money-laundering detection ahs investigation platform, has announced that it has raised $10M (approx €8.37M) in its Series A round of funding. The funding was led by fintech specialist BlackFin Capital Partners. In addition, existing investor Picus Capital also participated in this round.
The raised funds will enable Hawk AI to strengthen its European and US footprint, while also expanding to Singapore and the United Arab Emirates. Additionally, the company also expects to double its employee headcount by the end of 2022.
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Solving the industry-wide problem
According to Hawk AI, the current Anti-Money Laundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) solutions will often falsely flag or block transactions without need. To address the challenges, Hawk AI claims it eliminates false alerts, by applying fully transparent and auditable Machine Learning to deliver significant process efficiencies.
Hawk AI is a software platform for banks, payment firms, and fintechs for the detection of transactions linked to financial crime. The company’s solution forms a platform for information sharing and surveillance on multiple financial institutions – insights from billions of transactions annually while complying with data-protection legislation.
The software identifies patterns of suspicious activity in financial transactions through artificial intelligence and provides anti-money-laundering experts with relevant and actionable alerts. According to the company, financial institutions can ensure regulatory compliance at a significantly lower cost. Through its cloud-native, modular and open architecture, the solution can be integrated with existing banking and payment systems.
Tobias Schweiger, co-founder & CEO of Hawk AI, says, “We have made it our mission to bring long overdue technology advancements such as Cloud, AI and real-time analytics to these sensitive and costly processes. This latest investment speaks volumes about the opportunity we have in front of us, and we’re grateful for the support of our investor partners that validate our mission. Our proven technology and the team’s many decades of experience in financial services allow us to win our customers’ trust in a field where a solid footing counts the most.”
About Hawk AI
The company was founded in 2018 by experienced fintech entrepreneurs Tobias Schweiger and Wolfgang Berner, who both previously held senior leadership roles at PAY.ON (sold for $200M) and ACI Worldwide, the global payment systems company.
Hawk AI develops and operates a cloud-based software solution for the automated detection of suspected cases of financial crime. The company’s software offers financial institutions to make their transaction surveillance more efficient and ensure regulatory compliance. It works with financial institutions and partners such as North American Bancard, Ratepay and Modularbank.
Based on the principle of information sharing, Hawk AI aims to become the leading compliance platform for transaction surveillance.
About BlackFin Capital Partners
It is an independent private equity, and venture capital firm focused on financial services in Europe. BlackFin manages three buyout funds and one venture fund (BlackFin Tech) for a total of €1.8B under management.
Since its final closing in 2018, BlackFin Tech has invested in 15 European fintechs and insurtechs. BlackFin Capital Partners’s 40 investment professionals are spread across three offices in Paris, Brussels, and Frankfurt.
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