Singapore-headquartered regulatory technology (regtech) startup Silent Eight announced on Thursday that it has raised USD 6.2 million in its series A round.
Silent Eight provides an artificial intelligence-based solution to financial institutions to combat money laundering and terrorism financing.
Current investor Wavemaker Partners led this new round, and was joined by SC Ventures (Standard Chartered Bank’s venture arm), OTB Ventures, as well as other existing investors.
The capital from this round will be utilized to hire new employees and double the headcount in the company’s offices by the end of Q1 2020. In a statement, Silent Eight said that this move would support a strong pipeline of customers comprising large banks and insurance companies. The company has offices in Singapore, Warsaw, London, and New York.
Silent Eight CEO and co-founder Martin Markiewicz explained that their solution learns how people make decisions, either good or bad ones. He added that its transparent design allows customers to select best practices, as well as discard bad practices and behavior that lead to mistakes.
“Silent Eight can also explain the reasoning behind every decision the solution makes in plain English. This is the perfect design for use cases where stakes are very high and there is no room for mistakes,” Markiewicz said.
Alex Manson, Global Head of SC Ventures, said that the complexity of the financial system has created a demand for technologies that make financial crime compliance more effective and efficient.
“Silent Eight uses Artificial Intelligence to improve financial institutions’ name screening process, hence enabling better decisions. By investing in Silent Eight, we will help them scale across our footprint, participate in an area of growth seeing huge investments by financial firms and support our overall commitment to the global fight against financial crime,” Manson said.
With the new funding round, Paul Santos, managing partner at Wavemaker Partners Southeast Asia, has joined Silent Eight’s board of directors.
“Year after year, banks continue to face increased scrutiny and regulations. An artificial intelligence-powered engine like Silent Eight is the most effective solution to weed out money laundering and terrorist financing and reduce manpower and compliance risks. Their track record and pipeline speak for themselves. Now, Silent Eight is expanding very quickly. That’s a testament to the fact that they are in a great place,” Santos said.