Savi Security raises $7M to fight AI-powered consumer scams
Original: Savi’s app aims to protect consumers from realistic AI scams like kidnappers demanding ransom
Why This Matters
AI is enabling enterprise-grade cyberattacks against everyday consumers at near-zero cost, creating a new mass-market security category.
Savi Security, founded by brothers Patrick and Ryan Coughlin, raised $7 million in seed funding led by Acrew Capital. The startup launched an iPhone and Android app on July 7, 2026, to protect consumers from AI-generated scams delivered via calls, texts, and emails.
Savi Security was founded by Patrick Coughlin, former SVP of Security Products at Cisco and co-founder of cloud security startup TruSTAR (acquired by Splunk for ~$82M in 2021), and his brother Ryan Coughlin, who previously worked on consumer products at Apple and Spotify. The company raised $7 million in seed funding led by Acrew Capital, with Magnify Ventures, TTCER, and Resolute Ventures participating.
The founding motivation came from a personal incident: Patrick's mother received a spoofed call in which an AI-cloned voice of her daughter screamed for help, while a scammer demanded $1,200 and threatened murder. The caller ID was spoofed to show the daughter's real number, the voice was cloned from publicly available audio, and the scammer cited a local Walmart the daughter was known to frequent. The mother confirmed her daughter was safe before paying.
Patrick noted that generative AI has drastically lowered the cost of executing sophisticated scams previously reserved for targeting governments and enterprises. Voice cloning now requires as little as three seconds of publicly available audio. Savi's app aims to detect and flag such AI-generated scams across calls, texts, and emails for everyday consumers.