How does Apate.ai collect information about scammers?

Its AI agents masquerade as innocent victims with different ages, genders and accents. They answer calls, respond to messages, follow phishing links and join social groups to keep scammers engaged, then feed the details they obtain to customers.

Who uses Apate's scam intelligence?

Customers include banks, telecom companies, government agencies and utilities, such as Commonwealth Bank of Australia and TPG Telecom. They receive access to an insights portal with intelligence on scams targeting their users, employees, brands and products.

What has Apate's approach achieved so far?

Apate says its fleet has wasted 17 years of scammers' time across 2.5 million conversations. TPG has diverted nearly 590,000 calls to Apate's agents, and Commonwealth Bank of Australia has seen a 76% drop in publicly reported scam losses.

Large Language ModelsAI Business & IndustryTechCrunch AI3m agoOct 15, 2026, 04:00 JST

Apate.ai raises $8.15 million to bait scammers with undercover AI

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3 Key Points

What happened
Apate.ai runs thousands of undercover AI agents that answer scam calls, reply to shady messages, follow phishing links and join social groups posing as victims, drawing on Macquarie University research and having raised $8.15 million in seed funding from Lobby Capital, OIF Ventures, Investible, Concept Ventures and Baobab Ventures.
Why it matters
The agents extract scammer bank accounts, crypto wallets, phone numbers and malicious websites and feed that intelligence to customers such as banks, telecom companies and government agencies, letting them act before victims are harmed.

WHO IT HITSFraud and security teams at banks, telecom companies, government agencies and utilities gain pre-victim intelligence on active scam operations, while Apate's 20-person team expands into the U.K. and U.S.

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Context & Analysis

Apate was founded in 2024 on research done at Macquarie University in Sydney, and its origin traces to a real scam call. Founder and CEO Dali Kaafar kept a scammer on the line for 44 minutes at a family picnic, then wondered whether the task could be automated. That question led to research using machine learning and natural language processing to uncover scam call content and improve detection. Scam-baiting has long been a hobby, but Apate is commercializing it: the company says its agents talk to tens of thousands of scammers every day, and it trains both frontier models and its own fine-tuned models on those conversations. The backdrop is that AI has empowered scammers, with the FBI reporting more than 22,000 complaints of AI-related crimes in 2025 and about $893 million in losses, over $632 million of which came from investment scams. Apate raised $8.15 million in seed funding in August and has raised just under $10 million in total.

FAQ

How does Apate.ai collect information about scammers?: Its AI agents masquerade as innocent victims with different ages, genders and accents. They answer calls, respond to messages, follow phishing links and join social groups to keep scammers engaged, then feed the details they obtain to customers.
Who uses Apate's scam intelligence?: Customers include banks, telecom companies, government agencies and utilities, such as Commonwealth Bank of Australia and TPG Telecom. They receive access to an insights portal with intelligence on scams targeting their users, employees, brands and products.
What has Apate's approach achieved so far?: Apate says its fleet has wasted 17 years of scammers' time across 2.5 million conversations. TPG has diverted nearly 590,000 calls to Apate's agents, and Commonwealth Bank of Australia has seen a 76% drop in publicly reported scam losses.

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