Artificial intelligence is creating new opportunities for businesses, but it is also introducing new challenges around fraud, identity verification, and security. As digital transactions become more complex and AI agents begin acting on behalf of people and organizations, companies need better ways to verify identities, investigate suspicious activity, and establish trust.
These five founders are developing technology to address those challenges. From AI-powered fraud investigations to deepfake detection and verification infrastructure for autonomous agents, their companies are working to strengthen trust across an increasingly automated digital economy.
Karine Mellata — Co-founder and CEO of Variance
Karine Mellata is building Variance around a growing challenge for financial institutions, online marketplaces, and large enterprises: investigating fraud and suspicious activity at scale. Before founding the company, she worked on fraud engineering and risk systems at Apple, gaining experience in the infrastructure required to identify and mitigate complex forms of abuse. That background helped shape Variance’s focus on applying AI to investigations that traditionally require substantial manual effort.
Variance develops AI agents that support fraud reviews, identity investigations, and compliance workflows. The platform is designed to gather relevant information, analyze evidence, and produce auditable findings that investigators can review. By automating repetitive investigative work while preserving oversight, Mellata aims to help organizations handle more cases consistently and allow their teams to focus on decisions that require human judgment.
Isha Bhatnagar — Co-founder and CEO of Beltic
Isha Bhatnagar is addressing a new identity and security challenge emerging as AI agents begin interacting with businesses, websites, and financial services. Before co-founding Beltic, she spent nearly six years at Coinbase, working on product development related to identity, onboarding, and regulatory requirements. Her experience building systems that establish trust between businesses and their customers informs her work on a different question: how can organizations safely interact with software agents acting on behalf of those customers?
Beltic is developing verification infrastructure around the concept of “Know Your Agent,” helping businesses identify who is behind an AI agent, understand what it is attempting to do, and determine whether that action should be allowed. Its technology can enable a business to permit routine activities while blocking risky actions or requesting additional confirmation. As AI agents take on more transactional responsibilities, Bhatnagar’s work focuses on giving organizations the controls they need to adopt automation without losing visibility over what happens.
Tarini Sai Padmanabhuni — Founder and CEO of DetectifAI
Tarini Sai Padmanabhuni is working at the intersection of artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and digital identity. As the founder and CEO of DetectifAI, she is helping address the growing risks posed by synthetic audio, deepfakes, and AI-generated impersonation. These threats are becoming particularly important for financial institutions and businesses that rely on voice communications to verify identities, communicate with customers, and prevent fraud.
DetectifAI is developing AI-powered voice technology for banks and non-bank financial institutions, combining voice agents for verification and collections with real-time deepfake detection. The company’s work aims to help businesses distinguish legitimate interactions from potentially manipulated or fraudulent ones. By bringing voice automation and authenticity checks together, Padmanabhuni is pursuing a practical application of AI security at a time when increasingly convincing synthetic media is making traditional verification methods more difficult to trust.
Riya Jagetia — Co-founder and CEO of Socratix AI
Riya Jagetia brings experience in fraud detection, machine learning, and AI-powered investigations to her work at Socratix AI. Before launching the company, she worked on fraud detection and investigative tooling at DoorDash and Unit21, developing systems that helped teams identify suspicious activity and work through cases more efficiently. Those experiences exposed her to the operational burden facing fraud analysts, who often need to investigate large volumes of alerts while gathering evidence across multiple systems.
Socratix AI is building AI coworkers for fraud and risk teams, designed to take on repetitive investigative work such as gathering context, examining alerts, and helping analysts determine which cases warrant attention. The platform aims to combine AI reasoning with automated execution, allowing investigators to focus their time on complex decisions rather than manual research and routine tasks. Jagetia’s approach reflects a broader shift in financial security toward AI systems that can assist with end-to-end workflows while keeping people involved in critical judgment calls.
Damien Dugauquier — Co-founder and CEO of iPiD
Damien Dugauquier is tackling a fundamental problem in international payments: ensuring that money reaches the intended recipient. As a veteran of the cross-border payments and financial data industry, he co-founded iPiD with a team that includes former SWIFT professionals. The company focuses on the verification gaps that can lead to misdirected payments and fraud, particularly when financial institutions need to validate account details across countries with different banking systems and standards.
iPiD provides payment verification and identity infrastructure that helps financial institutions and payment providers check beneficiary information before funds are transferred. Its technology supports payee verification across international markets, helping organizations validate account ownership and details while reducing the risk of errors and fraudulent payments. Dugauquier’s work focuses on making cross-border transactions more secure and reliable by bringing verification closer to the point at which money moves, rather than relying on corrective measures after a payment has gone wrong.
Strengthening Trust in an AI-Driven Economy
As AI transforms digital interactions, trust is becoming an increasingly important part of the technology infrastructure businesses rely on. Fraud investigations, identity verification, deepfake detection, and secure payment processing may address different problems, but each plays a role in helping organizations operate confidently in a more automated environment.
The work of these founders highlights how AI can support that goal through faster investigations, stronger verification, and better control over digital activity. As threats evolve alongside new technologies, the companies building these capabilities will have an important role in shaping how businesses protect customers, secure transactions, and establish trust in the next generation of digital services.
