Startup company Ripjar has raised $36.8 million in a funding series for expanding its artificial intelligence technology.

The British company was founded by five data scientists who previously worked in the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which is the U.K.'s equivalent of the National Security Agency (NSA).

Specialist fintech investor Long Ridge Equity Partners led the funding, along with previous investors Winton Capital Ltd and Accenture. Ripjar CEO and CTO Jeremy Annis expressed their excitement over their partnership with Long Ridge, who brings expertise and resources in scaling fast-growing software companies.  

"This investment signals enormous confidence in our world-leading data intelligence technology and ability to protect companies and governments from criminal behavior which threatens their assets and prosperity," Annis said. He also added that the company will use this funding to expand Ripjar's business worldwide, provide their clients with "the most advanced financial crime solutions" and develop new features for the Labyrinth platform.

As a strategic partner, Accenture uses Ripjar's technologies with its number of financial services clients. Meanwhile, Ripjar also provides services with government clients for counterterrorism work. While it did not disclose specific names, its extensive partner list includes BAE Systems, Dow Jones, and PWC.

Meanwhile, the U.K.-based global investment management company Winton has been a long-time partner of Ripjar. Winton believes in investing in scientific methods and its investments driven by statistical inference, rather than plain human instinct. In March 2017, Ripjar secured a $4.5 million additional funding from Winton Ventures, just eight months after receiving its initial investment. The startup aims to accelerate it further growth while bringing its data analytics platform to more customers worldwide.  

Ripjar: Data intelligence amid the pandemic

With the shift to online transactions amid the COVID-19 pandemic and a tightening of the world economy, the company said 2020 was its biggest year, yet more cybercrimes were launched to take advantage of the financial instability. Ripjar has grown twice its size and expanded its offered services as the pandemic required the most advanced technology solutions to prevent vulnerabilities in the systems that became more apparent as the world shifted to remote working.

Ripjar confirmed it is earning sustainably with its AI platform, called Labyrinth, as cybercrime encompasses financial crime, which has become more encompassing to include activities like money laundering, fraud, and even terrorism funding. 

Ripjar has been building data intelligence solutions against these online crimes through its Labyrinth system, which works with both structured and unstructured data. It uses an API-based platform and natural language processing that allows organizations to integrate any data source in monitoring and analyzing activities. Labyrinth checks these against other data sources in real-time such as politically exposed persons (PEPs) lists, transaction alerts, and sanctions lists.

Since its founding in 2013, Ripjar has rapidly established its foothold as a leading data intelligence provider in the world. Labyrinth continuously discovers new risks using artificial intelligence while enabling human analysts to have informed decisions with speed and accuracy, which significantly saves time and money.

Currently, Ripjar already has about 20,000 clients worldwide while it signed new contracts with six enterprise customers as well as expansion deals with its four existing major clients.

Ripjar: On competition  

Ripjar budded in London, U.K., which has a great reputation for producing strong fintech startups and a strong talent base for artificial intelligence.

Like Ripjar, two other companies that combat fraud and financial crime using AI has also reaped success in recent months. These are cybercrime detection and AI companies ComplyAdvantage and Quantexa, which both gathered huge funding in July with $50 million and $64.7 million, respectively.

Despite the competition, Ripjar claims to have a more refined methodology. "We believe that Labyrinth is the most advanced solution in the market," said Ripjar Director of Intelligence David Balson as the technology was developed based on their first-hand experience of fighting crime and terrorism after working with the national security community for decades.

Balson added that there is no silver bullet for fighting against crime, so they have come up with numerous innovations to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of their work in both the law enforcement and financial sector. 

This applies to more than just Ripjar's technology as the money laundering issue involved up to $2 trillion, but only up to 2% were identified and recovered.

"We believe Ripjar is well-positioned to provide artificial intelligence solutions that will allow its clients to reduce the cost of compliance," Long Ridge Managing Partner Kevin Bhatt said in a statement. 

Read also: ScamWatch Warns About Text Message Scams From Impostors Posing as COVID-19 Contact Tracers Who Already Stole $3.3 Million From Victims

This is owned by Tech Times

Written by CJ Robles

ⓒ 2024 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Join the Discussion