Apate AI Agents Have Trapped Scammers for 17 Years
The startup uses conversational AI to tie up fraudsters and collect intelligence for banks and telecom providers.
Updated on Oct. 14, 2026 in Artificial Intelligence
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Founded in 2024, Apate has deployed AI agents that have spent 17 years worth of time in 2.5 million conversations with scammers. The startup acts as a fraud defense layer by extracting account details from perpetrators and sharing that intelligence with financial and telecom partners.
Why it matters
The company addresses a growing financial threat, as AI-related crimes caused $893 million in losses in 2025 alone. By automating the time-consuming process of engaging fraudsters, Apate aims to disrupt the economics of large-scale scam operations.
Apate agents have conducted 2.5 million conversations, totaling 17 years of interaction time, with one partner, TPG Telecom, diverting 590,000 calls to the system.
The players
Apate
A startup with 20 employees that uses conversational AI to trap scammers and provide fraud intelligence.
Commonwealth Bank of Australia
A major financial institution that reported a 76% reduction in scam losses after utilizing Apate's AI agents.
TPG Telecom
A telecommunications provider that has integrated the system to divert 590,000 scam calls.
FBI
The U.S. federal agency that documented $893 million in AI-related fraud losses during 2025.
The details
Apate deploys thousands of AI agents that masquerade as victims across phone calls, messages, and emails. The agents leverage frontier and fine-tuned models — specialized versions of large language models trained on curated datasets — to engage scammers in sustained, realistic dialogue. This process is designed to extract specific identifiers such as bank account numbers and cryptocurrency wallet addresses to bolster fraud prevention.
Timeline
2024: Apate was founded.
2025: The FBI recorded 22,000 complaints regarding AI-related crimes.
August 2026: The company raised $8.15 million in seed funding.
The Tech Race
The startup is scaling its operations to counter the $893 million in losses attributed to 2025 AI-related crimes. It now faces the challenge of expanding beyond its Australian base into the broader U.S. market.
The technology works behind the scenes at banks and telecom companies, meaning users benefit through automatic call filtering and lower fraud rates. While the company is currently expanding from its base in Australia, it plans to establish a larger U.S. presence soon.
The takeaway
Apate demonstrates that generative AI can be weaponized against itself to create a defensive layer for financial institutions. Watch for the company's planned expansion into the U.S. and London markets as a gauge for how widely these intelligence-gathering agents are adopted.
Further reading
Explore the latest developments in Artificial Intelligence to see how models are being adapted for security and defense.
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