Savi Security launches app to combat AI-generated scams

Savi Security, a security startup, has raised $7 million in seed funding and is launching its consumer application for iPhone and Android on Tuesday. The seed round was led by Acrew Capital, a venture capital firm, with participation from Magnify Ventures, TTCER, and Resolute Ventures. The startup’s new paid app is designed to screen texts, voicemails, and incoming calls to protect users from AI-generated scams.

The subscription pricing is structured to cover an entire family with no cap on the number of users:

• $8/month
• $63/year

The company was founded by brothers Patrick Coughlin and Ryan Coughlin. The inspiration for the startup came after their mother was targeted by an AI-generated scam involving kidnappers demanding ransom. During the call, she heard what she thought was her daughter’s voice screaming, followed by a demand for $1,200. Patrick Coughlin, whose previous startup TruSTAR was bought by Splunk in May 2021 for a reported $82 million before Cisco bought Splunk in 2024, noted that the incident highlighted how cybercriminals are now deploying the same level of sophistication against consumers that was previously aimed at government agencies and Fortune 500 companies.

The scale of these swindles is growing. According to the FTC (the US consumer protection regulator), people reporting online crimes collectively lost $3.5 billion to imposter scams in 2025. While older demographics are frequently targeted, younger users are also vulnerable. Research by Malwarebytes, a competitor and research source, implies Gen Z was targeted more often with text scams than other generations and fell for them about 25% of the time.

To train its scam-detection AI model, Savi Security first launched Scamwise, a free website tool where users can anonymously submit suspicious texts or emails. “We launched that about four months ago. We had 50,000 submissions, and it grows now every week by about 10,000 submissions or more,” Patrick Coughlin said, noting that total submissions reached 100,000 as of Tuesday.

While the free Scamwise tool is used for submitting suspicious texts or emails, the new paid app introduces live-call monitoring. This feature listens to phone calls to identify potential fraud and detect a fraudster in real-time. The company is currently mostly using Gemini, an AI model developed by Google, for its scam-detection AI model.

Why it matters

The rise of generative AI has lowered the barrier to entry for cybercriminals, turning sophisticated enterprise-grade fraud tactics into a consumer-facing threat. This shift requires new, real-time defensive tools to protect everyday users from AI-generated swindles.