Eyes Like a Hawk: AML startup Hawk raises €51.8 million to expose hidden financial crimes

Munich-based Hawk, a leading provider of AI-powered anti-money laundering (AML), screening and fraud prevention solutions, has today announced its €51.8 million Series C round of funding.

The funding round was led by One Peak, joining existing investors including Macquarie, Rabobank, BlackFin Capital Partners, Sands Capital, DN Capital, Picus, and Coalition.

“Every financial institution that wants to reduce compliance workloads and increase the accuracy of risk detection should be using AI to achieve those goals,” said Tobias Schweiger, CEO of Hawk. “The results are compelling—we’ve been able to increase alert prediction accuracy to almost 90% in some cases, while reducing false positives by 50%. We’re also uncovering twice as many previously undetected cases of ‘novel’ criminal activity.”

Founded in 2018, Hawk is a provider of AI-supported anti-money laundering and fraud prevention technology. Banks, payment providers, and FinTechs can utilise Hawk’s combination of traditional rules and explainable AI to improve the effectiveness of their AML compliance and fraud prevention by identifying more crime, while reportedly maximising efficiency by reducing false positives.

Hawk has partnered with more than 80 customers globally, ranging from large Tier 1 banks to mid-market financial institutions and FinTechs. Hawk customers include Ecobank, VakifBank International, Worldline, North, Synctera, CSI, Volt, Vodafone, and VR Payment.

These customers will benefit from the new investment funding, which will support continued product innovation as well as Hawk’s global expansion, particularly into the US.

Schweiger added: “AI is in our DNA at Hawk. Our mission is to provide financial institutions with the technology, the expertise and the support that they need to realise the transformative impact that machine learning and generative AI can have across their anti-financial crime operations. This investment enables us to further our mission, and we’re grateful to One Peak for their support, as well as the continued trust of our existing investors.”

According to Hawk, traditional systems create significant problems for compliance teams, including huge volumes of false positive alerts that need to be reviewed, which in turn leads to staffing challenges and costs. At the same time, criminals find ways to subvert the rules, which leads to illicit activity being overlooked. Hawk provides AI-powered technology to increase accuracy to find more crime, while reducing false positives.

David Klein, Co-founder and Managing Partner at One Peak, commented: “The value that Hawk delivers to AML and fraud teams around the world is truly remarkable. Financial institutions of all sizes attest to Hawk’s ability to deliver impressive results, exceptional reliability and collaborative support. Hawk’s technology enables banks to take a much more efficient approach to fighting financial crime, and we’re very excited to be backing Hawk’s world class team in their next leg of explosive growth.”

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