Most companies use AI proxies to launch products more quickly or to accelerate work processes, while Apate.ai allows them to act as undercover agents and get "scammed" in the process.
This Australian startup was founded in 2024, based on research from Macquarie University in Sydney. It has deployed thousands of AI agents that pretend to be unsuspecting victims. These agents can answer fraudulent calls, respond to suspicious texts and emails, click on phishing links, and join social media groups to trick scammers. They impersonate people of different ages, genders, and accents, and use multiple languages to encourage the scammers to continue talking, in order to gather useful information.
The company stated that its proxy network has so far allowed scammers to waste 17 years, involving 2.5 million conversations. More importantly for its customer base of Apate – which includes banks, telecommunications companies, government agencies, and utility companies – these undercover proxies manage to get scammers to reveal information that is usually only known after the victims have fallen for their schemes: bank accounts, cryptocurrency wallets, phone numbers, malicious websites, the brands they impersonate, and other details of the scams.
Apate is one of the 200 shortlisted companies for this year's TechCrunch Disrupt conference Startup Battlefield. This information will subsequently be provided to clients for them to develop anti-fraud measures and related initiatives. (The company will present its work to a group of venture capital judges at the Disrupt conference to be held in San Francisco Moscone West this week, which will last until Thursday, October 15th.)
This can be considered an interesting evolution in the methods of "enticing fraudsters," but considering to what extent AI has empowered fraudsters and hackers, it is not surprising. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reported that in 2025, it received over 22,000 crime complaints related to AI, resulting in losses of approximately 893 million dollars. More than 632 million dollars of this came from investment scams. FBI indicates that fraudsters utilize AI for communication and carry out advanced deep fakes of celebrities, executives, and credible individuals' voices and appearances.
For a long time, people have regarded "going along with scammers" as a sort of hobby – sometimes it's even quite amusing, such as asking scammers to read an entire book aloud or even getting ridiculous tattoos. Nowadays, as the capabilities of AI continue to grow, the situation is beginning to reverse.
Interestingly, the idea for Apate originated from a real scam call.
A few years ago, Apate founder and CEO Dali Kaafar received a call from an unknown number during a family picnic. Realizing that the caller was a scammer, he deliberately pretended to be foolish for the sake of his children and managed to keep the conversation going for 44 minutes.
Everyone laughed, but Kaafar noticed that during these 44 minutes, the scammer did not contact any real victims; at the same time, those 44 minutes were also wasted by him. This made him start to think: could he automate this process and learn something useful from it?
This idea ultimately led to his research work during his tenure at Macquarie University. Kaafar and his colleagues used machine learning and natural language processing to extract content from scam calls, and developed better methods for scam detection and prevention.
"Most practices in this industry are about remedying the situation after the fact. Telecom companies block accounts, but scammers quickly get new numbers; banks monitor transactions, but by then the scammers have already made contact with customers. We go straight to the scammers and obtain the information before anyone gets harmed," co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer Brad Joffe told TechCrunch. "Our AI agents communicate with thousands of scammers every day through phone calls, messages, emails, and web pages. What we provide to our customers is the content extracted from these conversations, along with the actions they can take based on that information."
Joffe indicates that Apate uses both cutting-edge models and its own fine-tuned models to drive proxies and perform analysis. The company uses AI proxies to converse with scammers, as well as Kaafar research conducted at Macquarie University to train the models.
In addition to using the proxy network with Apate, customers can also access an insight portal to obtain fraud intelligence and analysis targeting their end-users or employees, brands, products, etc. Customers can even assign specific tasks to these proxies, such as obtaining bank account numbers or cryptocurrency wallet addresses. Their text proxies can also search forums, investment groups, and social media platforms for potential fraudulent activities, and then engage in conversations under fictitious identities to uncover details about the fraudsters.
The startup's clients include the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, TPG Telecom, as well as other utility companies, telecommunications firms, and government agencies. Joffe stated that TPG has directed nearly 590,000 calls to Apate's agents; the Commonwealth Bank of Australia reported a 76% reduction in fraud losses; and an unnamed Australian bank cooperating with Apate used its outbound call agents to disrupt 22 fraud attempts.
Investors are also betting that they can make money from the fact of "outsmarting scammers." Apate completed a $8.15 million seed round of financing in August, with investors including Lobby Capital, OIF Ventures, Investible, Concept Ventures, and Baobab Ventures. Joffe stated that this company, which has 20 employees, has raised just under $10 million in total so far and plans to use the latest round of funding for product development and international expansion, including opening an office in London and establishing a larger business in the United States.
“The name ‘Apate’ comes from the goddess of deception in Greek mythology, which fits well with the work of our agency,” said Joffe, and added that the startup even included footage of scammers cursing at robots in their roadshow materials.
"We see this as a sign of frustration; every curse word is celebrated on Apate. We might be one of the few companies in the world that feels happy when people swear at our products."
