A London-based company at the forefront of synthetic threat intelligence, Innerworks, has successfully raised £3 million in a seed funding round. This innovative firm utilises AI-generated data to simulate real-world cyber threats, aiming to create the most effective ‘immune system for the internet’.
The funding round, led by AlbionVC, included contributions from several firms and angel investors from prominent companies such as Citi, UBS, and Apple. Innerworks was founded by Oliver Quie (CEO), Oscar Hayek (CTO), and Tom Ryan (Chief Product Officer), who bring a wealth of expertise in AI and decentralisation to the venture.
Innerworks has developed cutting-edge technology to combat sophisticated AI-powered fraud that often evades traditional security measures. The company has already demonstrated its impact by partnering with the incident response firm ZeroShadow to uncover activities linked to North Korean money launderers involved in a $1.5 billion cryptocurrency heist, the largest in history.
The company’s synthetic threat intelligence focuses on distinguishing genuine human behaviour from AI-generated interactions that closely mimic reality. This threat is rapidly increasing, with deepfake fraud attempts rising by over 2,000% since 2022. Central to their platform is RedTeam, the world’s first crypto-bounty platform for adversarial AI hacking. This programme leverages a global network of ethical hackers and AI agents to continuously test and improve Innerworks’ defences.
Innerworks boasts a 97% detection rate against AI threats, surpassing the accuracy of multibillion-dollar companies and all top five incumbent providers in direct comparisons. CEO Oliver Quie stated, “We’re facing AI-powered deception that can mimic legitimate users with frightening accuracy. Existing security companies have become obsolete because they assume threats will behave differently than legitimate users. Our platform solves this problem using synthetic threat intelligence and decentralised training to defend against even the most sophisticated AI-based attacks.”
With this new funding, Innerworks plans to accelerate product development, expand the RedTeam ecosystem, and increase its presence across global financial centres. Key priorities include enhancing the platform’s adversarial training capabilities and forming strategic partnerships with top-tier financial institutions seeking to counter synthetic threats.
Cat Mcdonald, a partner at AlbionVC, commented, “We invested in Innerworks because they’re not incrementally improving fraud detection, they’re fundamentally reimagining it. Their ability to detect what other systems miss represents an essential new security layer for the financial sector’s response to this new threat landscape.”
