Most companies use AI agents to speed up workflows. Apate sends them undercover to get scammed.
The startup's fleet of AI agents masquerade as innocent victims, answering scam calls, responding to shady messages and emails, following phishing links, and joining social media groups. The agents adopt different ages, genders, accents and languages as they seek to keep scammers engaged long enough to extract useful intelligence.
Apate, a finalist in this year's Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, feeds gathered intelligence to its customers. The information includes bank accounts, crypto wallets, phone numbers, malicious websites, the brands being impersonated, and other details about the scams. Banks, telecom companies, government agencies and utilities use this data to strengthen their anti-fraud efforts.
The idea for Apate originated from a personal experience of founder and CEO Dali Kaafar. Several years ago, while at a family picnic, Kaafar received a scam call and decided to play along, keeping the scammer on the line for 44 minutes. He realized those were 44 minutes the scammer had not spent calling a real victim, but also 44 minutes of his own time wasted. That observation led him to wonder if the process could be automated and made productive.
The FBI received more than 22,000 complaints of AI-related crimes in 2025, resulting in about $893 million in losses. Over $632 million of that came from investment scams, where fraudsters use AI to hold conversations and deepfake voices and appearances of celebrities, executives and trusted figures.