Hawk, founded in 2018 and based in Munich, provides AI-supported anti-money-laundering and fraud-prevention technology for banks, payment providers and fintechs. It combines traditional rules with explainable machine learning to improve AML compliance and reduce false positives. The company reports it can raise alert prediction accuracy to almost 90%, cut false positives by 50%, and uncover twice as many previously undetected cases of novel criminal activity. Hawk serves more than 80 customers globally, including Ecobank, VakifBank International, Worldline, North, Synctera, CSI, Volt, Vodafone, and VR Payment. The new funding is intended to support continued product innovation and global expansion, with a stated emphasis on entering the US market. CEO Tobias Schweiger says AI is core to the company’s mission to transform anti-financial-crime operations. Hawk builds explainable AI software to detect and prevent financial crime, combining AML, sanction screening and fraud prevention in a modular platform. Its solution can enhance or replace traditional rules‑based systems with AI‑powered transaction monitoring, payment screening, perpetual KYC, and real‑time fraud prevention. Hawk says its explainable AI reduces false positive rates and detects unseen and novel crime to improve detection effectiveness. The company currently monitors or screens billions of transactions worldwide. Management plans to accelerate international growth and expand its banking client base in Asia‑Pacific, the US and beyond, leveraging investor support. Founded in 2018, Hawk has rapidly scaled globally amid strong demand for AI‑centric anti‑financial crime technology. Hawk AI develops cloud-native, modular AML surveillance software that aims to improve how banks and payment companies manage compliance risks through explainable AI. Founded in Munich in 2018, the company emphasizes the “highest level of explainability” in its decision-making engine to support audits and regulatory investigations. Its product suite includes payments screening, customer screening, transaction monitoring, transaction fraud and a customer risk rating tool that combines static and dynamic data. Hawk AI says its patent-pending technology provides the expected range of normal behavior and natural-language risk-factor scores to give context for suspicious-activity evaluations. Customers named in the article include Moss, North American Bancard and Banco do Brasil Americas. The company positions its cloud-native SaaS model against legacy on-premise incumbents and newer competitors, and plans to use new capital to bolster product development and accelerate global expansion. Hawk AI operates a cloud-native, modular and open transaction-surveillance platform that combines transparent, auditable machine learning with traditional rules to detect suspicious activity in real time and reduce false alerts. Its software integrates quickly with existing banking and payment systems to deliver actionable alerts to financial-crime specialists and improve regulatory compliance. The company says its ongoing monitoring covers billions of transactions annually and that the platform enables information sharing and surveillance across multiple institutions while complying with data-protection laws. Customers and partners include Ratepay, North American Bancard and Modularbank. Hawk AI plans to strengthen its European and U.S. footprint and expand to Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, and expects to double its headcount by the end of 2022.

Total raised

$88M

Funding rounds

4

Latest round

Series C

Latest activity

Apr 2025