Apate.AI raises US$8.15M taking its autonomous fleet of AI agents to a global fight against scammers

Round led by Lobby Capital. The Sydney-founded company behind the world's first autonomous fraud counter-intelligence platform reincorporates in the US and builds out its presence across North America and Europe, as global scam losses hit a record US$1.03 trillion a year.

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SYDNEY, 31 August 2026.

Apate.AI today announced it has raised US$8.15 million in seed funding as part of an over-subscribed round led by Lobby Capital, with participation from OIF Ventures, Investible, Concept Ventures and Baobab Ventures. In parallel, Apate has reincorporated in the United States as a Delaware corporation, effective 25 August 2026, to support its global growth.

Apate builds and deploys armies of adversarial conversational AI agents that infiltrate fraud networks, engage fraudsters across every communication channel, and extract real-time intelligence at global scale. The company exists to flip the script on the economics of fraud, by beating bad actors at their own game and disrupting their business model.

Global scam losses have peaked at US$1.03 trillion. Banks, telcos and governments spend billions on detection and blocking, yet losses keep rising, as fraud has become industrialised and increasingly driven by AI. Most tools watch for fraud after it happens. Apate steps inside it, deploying its realistic voice and text agents designed to mimic real victims. Thousands of agents hold convincing conversations with scammers for as long as 2 hours at a time, wasting attackers' time and resources while extracting the actionable intelligence to disrupt their operations pro-actively before they successfully monetise their scam.

Accurate intelligence, such as impersonation tactics, phishing URLs, mule bank accounts and crypto wallets are extracted directly from the scammers, which is intelligence that institutions cannot see on their own. Every conversation feeds a live intelligence corpus that grows more valuable with each deployment, and that reinforces the fleet of agents’ efficacy in engaging more scammers globally, compounding in a world-unique data set and platform for investigation, tracing and disruption capabilities.

The platform is already in production defending tier-one institutions, including Commonwealth Bank of Australia. The company has now run more than 2.5 million autonomous conversations with threat actors and extracted over 250,000 intelligence artefacts, which have been fed into the disruption pipelines of its customers.

The timing reflects a global regulatory shift toward more proactive defenses against scams. Australia's Scam Prevention Framework, the UK's reimbursement regime and the EU's PSD3 are moving scam prevention from a reputational issue to a balance-sheet obligation for the institutions that can actually stop fraud, which is the layer Apate operates in.

With the new funding, Apate will deepen its platform and expand internationally. The company will open a new office in London next quarter to serve its European customers, and is building up its US presence to meet significant demand from telcos, financial institutions and government. Co-ounder and Chief Product Officer Peter Eckermann will relocate to the United States to lead that expansion across North America. Apate's technology and research team is expanding significantly and will remain Sydney based.

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‍“For the first time, the people defending against fraud can get ahead of it. Our agents engage scammers directly, waste their time and money, and turn their tactics into intelligence that protects the people they target. This round takes that to institutions and their customers worldwide,”

‍- Prof. Dali Kaafar, Founder and CEO of Apate.AI.

‍“Scammers around the globe are increasingly sophisticated, and proliferating exponentially as they embrace AI. As a result, the number of victims and the related losses are accelerating. The proprietary and pioneering Apate solution is combatting this with a proactive approach that is showing unparalleled results, and they are just getting started. We are thrilled to back a team with such unique technical expertise and a compelling market leadership position. At Lobby Capital, we seek opportunities to back some of the most impactful businesses, and Apate perfectly aligns with our investment thesis: doing good while also doing well.”

- Buddy Arnheim, Founding and General partner at Lobby Capital.
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About Apate.AI

Apate.AI is the world's first autonomous fraud counter-intelligence platform. It deploys adversarial conversational AI at scale to divert, distract and disrupt scam operations across voice, messaging and email, converting every interaction into real-time intelligence that equips banks, telcos, consumer brands, law enforcement and government agencies to prevent and disrupt scams. Founded in Sydney out of research at the Macquarie University Cyber Security Hub, and grounded in nationally-funded security research, Apate is now a US-incorporated company with operations in Australia, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Learn more at https://Apate.ai
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About Lobby Capital

Lobby Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley. Built on the belief that great companies start with remarkable people, the partner-led, hands-on approach has led the Lobby Capital team to back some of the technology's most transformative businesses, including Splunk, OpenTable, Trulia/Zillow, eBates, Cloudera, Box, Fast.ly, AirBNB (via HotelTonight), SentinelOne, GitLab, Hippo Insurance, MaintainX and Groq. Inspired and with a strong connection to the Lobby Conference community, the firm draws on a network of several thousand entrepreneurs, leading operators, technologists, advisors, and investors to help founders build enduring companies.

Learn more at www.lobby.vc
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Media contact

Email: Comms@apate.ai
Tel: +61 435747249