ThetaRay raises $57M
By Matthew Kalman
OurCrowd’s FinTech security pioneer ThetaRay raised $57M to support its anti-money-laundering (AML) technology, as Bloomberg, Reuters, TechCrunch and other global media reported.
Portage, a financial services investment specialist, led the round with participation from OurCrowd investors. The money will be used to accelerate global growth plans as financial institutions seeks to replace legacy tools with advanced financial crime detection technology.
“We are excited to support ThetaRay as they bring their market-leading, AI-powered technology to new customers globally,” says Devon Kirk, Partner and Co-Head of Portage Capital Solutions.
Israel-based ThetaRay’s SONAR AML platform uses artificial intelligence to approximate human intuition to detect and pinpoint transactions indicating suspicious activities. The company promises a 95% detection rate and virtually no false positives.
“We are excited to support ThetaRay as they bring their market-leading, AI-powered technology to new customers globally”
This protection helps banks and FinTechs expand their business and increase revenue, without risk of exploitation from terrorist financing, money laundering and human trafficking.
According to the United Nations, malicious actors are transferring $800 billion to $2 trillion between accounts annually, equivalent to 2%-5% of global gross domestic product.
ThetaRay’s technology monitors over $15 trillion in transactions each year at some of the world’s biggest FinTechs and banks. The company’s clients include Nuvei, the Canadian FinTech giant; Payoneer, the world’s go-to partner for digital commerce; and Travelex, Brazil’s largest foreign exchange specialist.
Several of the world’s largest correspondent banks outside China, as well as Tier-1 banks in France, Spain and the United Arab Emirates, also entrust their cross-border transactions to ThetaRay.
The company has raised about $160 million to date, TechCrunch reports. The new infusion “gives us a few years of runway to scale the business, and to carry along those existing growth vectors of fintech and the corporate payment space,” CEO Peter Reynolds told TechCrunch in an interview.
ThetaRay estimates that the overall market for AML tools is worth $9 billion, and it is looking into a wider range of financial applications. One of these areas is correspondence banking, which has become an effective way for money launderers to mask the origins of their funds as well as the final recipients.
Future plans for the company include a public listing when market conditions improve, Reynolds said.
ThetaRay has won various global awards, including the Compliance Solution of the Year prize from the Americas FinTech community at Cross Tech 2022 in Miami. The UAE financial community awarded it the AML Solution Provider of 2022.
