Apate's AI agents pose as scam victims on phone calls, texts, and emails to waste fraudsters' time and extract usable fraud intelligence, such as bank account numbers and crypto wallet addresses, that its customers use to block scams. The Sydney-based startup says its agents have logged 2.5 million scam conversations and kept scammers occupied for a combined 17 years, figures it presented this week as a finalist in TechCrunch Disrupt's Startup Battlefield 200.
Apate's AI Agents Impersonate Victims Across Calls, Texts, and Email
Apate's agents adopt different ages, genders, and accents, and converse in multiple languages across voice calls, text messages, email, social media groups, and phishing websites. Customers can assign the agents specific missions, such as obtaining a bank account number or a crypto wallet address from a scammer. Co-founder and chief commercial officer Brad Joffe said the agents talk to tens of thousands of scammers every day across those channels. The company trains its own fine-tuned models alongside frontier AI models, drawing on the agents' own scam conversations and on founder Dali Kaafar's earlier machine learning research into scam call content.
A 44-Minute Scam Call Led Dali Kaafar to Found Apate in 2024
Kaafar, a Macquarie University researcher, kept a scammer on the phone for 44 minutes during a family picnic and wondered whether that time-wasting could be automated while also producing useful intelligence. He founded Apate in 2024 based on that research, and the company now has about 20 employees. Joffe described the company's approach as a departure from how the fraud-prevention industry has worked, saying, "Most of the industry works after the fact."
Commonwealth Bank Reports a 76% Drop in Scam Losses After Deploying Apate
Commonwealth Bank of Australia, one of Apate's customers, reported a 76% drop in publicly reported scam losses after deploying the company's agents. Telecom provider TPG Telecom has diverted nearly 590,000 calls to Apate's agents, and an unnamed Australian bank used outbound agents to disrupt 22 scam campaigns. Apate also counts utilities, other telecom companies, and government agencies among its customers, who receive the intelligence the agents gather through an analytics portal covering scams targeting their users, employees, brands, and products.
Apate Raised $8.15 Million to Expand to London and the U.S.
Apate raised $8.15 million in seed funding in August 2026 from Lobby Capital, OIF Ventures, Investible, Concept Ventures, and Baobab Ventures, bringing its total funding to just under $10 million. The company plans to use the new funding for product development and international expansion, including a London office and a larger U.S. presence. The FBI has reported more than 22,000 AI-related crime complaints in 2025, with about $893 million in losses, including more than $632 million from AI-enabled investment scams, the kind of figures Apate is using to pitch its approach to banks, telecoms, and government agencies beyond Australia.
Why This Matters for Engineering Leadership
Apate's growth is a data point for any engineering or security leader weighing whether to meet AI-enabled fraud with more AI rather than with detection rules alone. The company's customer results, a 76% drop in reported scam losses at one bank and 22 disrupted scam campaigns at another, suggest that an AI agent built specifically to engage and extract intelligence from an adversary can outperform systems built only to flag suspicious activity after the fact. That distinction matters as the FBI's own figures show AI-enabled fraud losses climbing past $890 million in a single year. Leaders evaluating a vendor like Apate, or building similar capability in-house, should ask the same questions Apate itself had to answer: how is a conversational agent's mission scoped so it extracts useful intelligence without overstepping into entrapment or privacy violations, how is the intelligence it gathers verified before it is acted on, and who owns the decision to escalate from passive monitoring to active engagement with a suspected bad actor.
FAQ
What does Apate's AI do?
Apate's AI agents pose as scam victims across phone calls, texts, email, and social media to waste scammers' time and extract fraud intelligence, such as bank account numbers and crypto wallet addresses, for its customers.
Who founded Apate and why?
Dali Kaafar, a Macquarie University researcher, founded Apate in 2024 after keeping a scammer on a call for 44 minutes and wondering whether that time-wasting could be automated to also produce fraud intelligence.
How much funding has Apate raised?
Apate raised $8.15 million in seed funding in August 2026, bringing its total funding to just under $10 million.
Which companies use Apate's AI agents?
Commonwealth Bank of Australia and TPG Telecom are named customers, and Apate also serves utilities, other telecom companies, and government agencies.
What results have Apate's customers reported?
Commonwealth Bank reported a 76% drop in publicly reported scam losses, TPG Telecom has diverted nearly 590,000 calls to Apate's agents, and one unnamed bank disrupted 22 scam campaigns using outbound agents.
How big is the AI-enabled fraud problem Apate is targeting?
The FBI reported more than 22,000 AI-related crime complaints in 2025, with about $893 million in losses, including more than $632 million from AI-enabled investment scams.