While most businesses utilize AI agents to accelerate product development or streamline processes, Apate.ai employs them to go undercover and intentionally become targets of scams.
Established in 2024, building on research conducted at Macquarie University in Sydney, this Australian startup dispatches thousands of AI agents disguised as unsuspecting victims. These agents are programmed to answer scam calls, respond to suspicious messages and emails, click phishing links, and join social media groups to lure fraudsters. They adopt diverse identities, encompassing various ages, genders, accents, and languages, aiming to keep scammers engaged long enough to extract valuable information.
The company reports that its extensive network of agents has collectively wasted 17 years of scammers’ time across 2.5 million interactions. More critically for Apate’s clientele, which includes banks, telecom providers, government entities, and utility companies, these undercover agents strive to uncover details about scammers typically only revealed after a victim has been defrauded: bank accounts, crypto wallets, phone numbers, malicious websites, the brands they impersonate, and other specifics of their operations.
Apate, recognized as a finalist in this year’s Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt, then furnishes this intelligence to its customers, enabling them to enhance their anti-fraud measures and initiatives. (The company is scheduled to present to a panel of VC judges at Disrupt, taking place this week at Moscone West in San Francisco until Thursday, October 15.)
This innovative approach represents a fascinating evolution of scam-baiting, unsurprising given the significant empowerment AI has provided to scammers and hackers. The FBI recorded over 22,000 complaints concerning AI-related crimes in 2025, resulting in approximately $893 million in losses. Over $632 million of these losses stemmed from investment scams, where the FBI notes fraudsters use AI for conversations and to deepfake voices and appearances of public figures, executives, and trusted individuals.
For an extended period, people have found entertainment in deliberately engaging scammers — sometimes with humorous results, such as coaxing fraudsters to recite entire books aloud, or even to get absurd tattoos. Now, with AI’s increasing capabilities, the dynamic is shifting.
Interestingly, the foundational concept behind Apate originated from an actual scam call.
Several years prior, Apate’s founder and CEO, Dali Kaafar, received a call from an unknown number during a family picnic. Recognizing it as a scam, he chose to feign ignorance for his children’s amusement and managed to sustain the call for 44 minutes.
While everyone enjoyed the moment, Kaafar realized that those 44 minutes were not spent targeting a genuine victim. It also prompted him to consider whether this time-consuming activity could be automated and, in the process, yield valuable insights.
This idea eventually spurred research at his post at Macquarie University, where Kaafar and his associates employed machine learning and natural language processing to analyze the content of scam calls and formulate more effective methods for detecting and preventing scams.
“Most of the industry operates reactively. Telcos block numbers, but scammers simply acquire new ones. Banks monitor transactions, but by then the scammer has already engaged the customer. We proactively approach the scammer to obtain information before anyone is harmed,” Brad Joffe, co-founder and chief commercial officer, informed TechCrunch. “Our AI agents interact with tens of thousands of scammers daily across calls, messages, email, and the web. What we provide our customers is the intelligence derived from these conversations, and how they can leverage it.”
Joffe stated that Apate employs both cutting-edge models and its own finely-tuned models to power its agents and analytical capabilities. The company trains its models using conversations its agents have had with scammers, in addition to the research Kaafar conducted at Macquarie.
In addition to gaining access to Apate’s fleet of agents, customers receive an insights portal that offers intelligence and analytics on scams targeting their end-users or employees, brands, products, and more. Customers can even assign specific objectives to these agents, such as acquiring a bank account number or crypto-wallet address. Its text agents can monitor forums, investment groups, and social platforms for potential scam activity, subsequently engaging in conversations with a fabricated identity to uncover scammers’ details.
The startup’s clientele includes Commonwealth Bank of Australia, TPG Telecom, as well as various other utilities, telecommunications companies, and government agencies. Joffe reported that TPG has redirected nearly 590,000 calls to Apate’s agents, Commonwealth has observed a 76% reduction in publicly reported scam losses, and an unnamed Australian bank collaborating with the startup has utilized its outbound agents to disrupt 22 scam campaigns.
Investors are also confident in the potential for profit from deceiving scammers. Apate secured $8.15 million in seed funding in August from Lobby Capital, OIF Ventures, Investible, Concept Ventures, and Baobab Ventures. Joffe stated that the 20-person company has raised just under $10 million in total and intends to allocate the latest round towards product development and international expansion, including establishing an office in London and expanding its presence in the U.S.
“Apate is named after the Greek goddess of deception, which felt apt given the nature of our agents’ work,” Joffe remarked, adding that the startup even features instances of scammers cursing at their bots in its promotional materials.
“We interpret that as a sign of frustration, and every swear word is celebrated by us at Apate. We are likely one of the few businesses globally that celebrates when people swear at our product.”