The co-founders of Silent Eight, from left to proper: Michael Wilkowski, Julia Markiewicz and Martin Markiewicz.
Silent Eight
WARSAW — With regards to monetary crime, banks can usually be “one choice away from an enormous mess,” Martin Markiewicz, CEO of Silent Eight instructed CNBC.
That is as a result of the chance of fines and reputational harm is excessive if monetary corporations do not do sufficient to stamp out crimes like cash laundering and terrorist financing. However it takes enormous period of time and assets to research and forestall such actions.
Markiewicz’s firm makes use of synthetic intelligence (AI) to assist monetary establishments struggle these points in a bid to chop the quantity of assets it takes to sort out crime, retaining banks within the good books of regulators.
“So our grand concept for a product … (is that) AI must be doing this job, not essentially people,” Markiewicz mentioned in an interview on Thursday at a convention hosted by OTB Ventures. “So it is best to have a capability of one million individuals and do thousands and thousands of those investigations … with out having this limitation of similar to how large my group is.”
With Silent Eight’s income set to see threefold development this 12 months and hit profitability for the primary time, Markiewicz desires to get his firm in place to go public within the U.S.
How AI can catch criminals
Silent Eight’s software program is predicated on generative AI, the identical expertise that underpins the viral ChatGPT chatbot. However it isn’t educated in the identical manner.
ChatGPT is educated on a so-called giant language mannequin, or LLM. It is a single set of giant quantities of information, permitting immediate ChatGPT and obtain a response.
Silent Eight’s mannequin is educated on a number of smaller fashions which can be particular to a job. For instance, one AI mannequin appears to be like at how names are translated throughout totally different languages. This might flag an individual who’s doubtlessly opening accounts with totally different spellings of names the world over.
These smaller fashions mix to type Silent Eight’s software program that a number of the largest banks on the planet, from Normal Chartered to HSBC, are utilizing to struggle monetary crime.
Markiewicz mentioned Silent Eight’s AI fashions had been truly educated on the processes that human investigators had been finishing up inside monetary establishments. In 2017, Normal Chartered turned the primary financial institution to begin utilizing the corporate’s software program. However Silent Eight’s software program required buy-in from Normal Chartered so the start-up may get entry to the chance administration knowledge within the financial institution to construct up its AI.
“That is why our technique was so dangerous,” Markiewicz mentioned.
“So we simply knew that we must begin with some large monetary establishments first, for the opposite ones to know that there isn’t any threat and comply with.”
As Silent Eight has onboarded extra banks as prospects, its AI has been capable of get extra superior.
Markiewicz added that for monetary establishments shopping for the software program, it’s “orders of magnitude” cheaper than paying all of the people that may be required to do the identical course of.
Silent Eight’s headquarters is in Singapore with places of work in New York, London, and Warsaw, Poland.
IPO forward
Markiewicz instructed CNBC that he forecasts income to develop greater than three-and-a-half occasions in 2023 versus final 12 months, however declined to reveal a determine. He added that Silent Eight shall be worthwhile this 12 months with increasingly more monetary establishments approaching board.
HSBC, Normal Chartered and First Abu Dhabi Financial institution are amongst Silent Eight’s dozen or so prospects.
The CEO additionally mentioned the corporate will not be planning to boost cash following a $40 million funding spherical final 12 months, that was led by TYH Ventures and welcomed HSBC Ventures, in addition to current buyers which embody OTB Ventures and Normal Chartered’s funding arm.
However he mentioned Silent Eight is getting “IPO prepared” by the top of 2025 with a view to itemizing on the tech-heavy Nasdaq within the U.S. Nonetheless, this does not imply Silent Eight will go public in 2025. Markiewicz mentioned he desires the corporate to be in an excellent place to go public, which suggests reporting funds like a public firm, for instance.
“It is an choice that I wish to have, not that there is some obligation or some investor settlement that I’ve,” Markiewicz mentioned.
