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 typically be “one resolution away from an enormous mess,” Martin Markiewicz, CEO of Silent Eight advised CNBC.
That is as a result of the danger of fines and reputational injury is excessive if monetary corporations do not do sufficient to stamp out crimes like cash laundering and terrorist financing. Nevertheless it takes enormous period of time and sources to analyze and stop 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 sources it takes to deal with crime, preserving banks within the good books of regulators.
“So our grand thought for a product … (is that) AI ought to be doing this job, not essentially people,” Markiewicz stated in an interview on Thursday at a convention hosted by OTB Ventures. “So you must have a capability of 1,000,000 individuals and do tens of millions of those investigations … with out having this limitation of identical to how huge my group is.”
With Silent Eight’s income set to see threefold development this 12 months and hit profitability for the primary time, Markiewicz needs 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 method.
ChatGPT is educated on a so-called giant language mannequin, or LLM. It is a single set of giant quantities of knowledge, permitting immediate ChatGPT and obtain a response.
Silent Eight’s mannequin is educated on a number of smaller fashions which are particular to a job. For instance, one AI mannequin seems at how names are translated throughout completely different languages. This might flag an individual who’s doubtlessly opening accounts with completely different spellings of names internationally.
These smaller fashions mix to type Silent Eight’s software program that a number of the largest banks on this planet, from Normal Chartered to HSBC, are utilizing to struggle monetary crime.
Markiewicz stated Silent Eight’s AI fashions have been truly educated on the processes that human investigators have been finishing up inside monetary establishments. In 2017, Normal Chartered grew to become the primary financial institution to start out 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 danger administration knowledge within the financial institution to construct up its AI.
“That is why our technique was so dangerous,” Markiewicz stated.
“So we simply knew that we must begin with some huge monetary establishments first, for the opposite ones to know that there is no such thing as a danger and observe.”
As Silent Eight has onboarded extra banks as clients, its AI has been in a position to 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 workplaces in New York, London, and Warsaw, Poland.
IPO forward
Markiewicz advised CNBC that he forecasts income to develop greater than three-and-a-half instances in 2023 versus final 12 months, however declined to reveal a determine. He added that Silent Eight will probably be worthwhile this 12 months with an increasing number of monetary establishments approaching board.
HSBC, Normal Chartered and First Abu Dhabi Financial institution are amongst Silent Eight’s dozen or so clients.
The CEO additionally stated the corporate just isn’t planning to lift 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 embrace OTB Ventures and Normal Chartered’s funding arm.
However he stated 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. Nevertheless, this does not imply Silent Eight will go public in 2025. Markiewicz stated he needs the corporate to be in a superb place to go public, which implies reporting funds like a public firm, for instance.
“It is an possibility that I wish to have, not that there is some obligation or some investor settlement that I’ve,” Markiewicz stated.
