Will Silent Eight Mark The Entry Of AI-powered Startups Into The Nasdaq?

Hey, financial detectives – ready for the latest AI-powered news?

This time we dive into the world of Fintech, as AI is driving financial startups to not only automate fraud detection but to achieve their dreams of being publicly listed companies.

Banks are "one decision away from a huge mess," Martin Markiewicz, CEO of Silent Eight told CNBC. That's because failing to adequately combat financial crimes like money laundering and terrorism funding carries significant legal and public relations risks for banks and other financial institutions. However, spending a significant amount of time and energy investigating and preventing such operations is also not ideal.

This is where Markiewicz's firm Silent Eight steps in to employ AI in combating these difficulties, with the ultimate goal of reducing the resources required to combat crime and maintaining the good standing of financial institutions with government authorities.

Markiewicz stated, "So our grand idea for a product... (is that) AI should be doing this job, not necessarily humans," during an interview on Thursday at a conference held by OTB Ventures. “So you should have a capacity of a million people and do millions of these investigations ... without having this limitation of just like how big my team is.”
   

Let Us Learn More About Silent Eight, Shall We?

Silent Eight's model powers the popular ChatGPT chatbot but is trained on numerous task-specific models. One AI algorithm analyses name translations between languages, for instance to indicate a person opening accounts with international name spellings.

These smaller models make up Silent Eight's financial crime software, used by major banks such as Standard Chartered and HSBC.

Markiewicz claimed Silent Eight's AI models were trained on financial institution investigators' operations. The first bank to use the programme was Standard Chartered in 2017. Silent Eight needed Standard Chartered's approval to use its risk management data to construct its AI models.

“That’s why our strategy was so risky,” Markiewicz said.

“So we just knew that we will have to start with some big financial institutions first, for the other ones to know that there is no risk and follow.”

Markiewicz stated that financial firms buying the software save “orders of magnitude” over hiring humans to do the same job.
 

Is The Company IPO Ready?

Markiewicz hopes to take Silent Eight public in the United States when it triples its revenue this year and turns a profit for the first time.

Markiewicz told CNBC that revenue will climb more than three-and-a-half times in 2023 compared to last year, although he did not specify. He noted that additional financial institutions will join Silent Eight this year, making it profitable. At the moment, HSBC, Standard Chartered and First Abu Dhabi Bank are among Silent Eight's dozen clients.

Statista and CB Insights agree with Markiewicz’s optimism. AI startup funding grew steadily from 18 billion U.S. dollars in 2017 to 26 billion in 2020. In the first six months of 2023, funding to the space increased 5x compared to 2022.

After a $40 million funding round headed by TYH Ventures and welcoming HSBC Ventures, OTB Ventures and Standard Chartered's investment arm last year, the CEO of SIlent Eight indicated the company is not seeking to raise more money.

He said Silent Eight is aiming to be “IPO ready” by 2025 on the tech-heavy Nasdaq in the U.S. This does not mean Silent Eight will go public in 2025. Markiewicz wants the company to be ready to go public, which involves reporting finances like one.

“It’s an option that I want to have, not that there’s some obligation or some investor agreement that I have,” Markiewicz said.
 
Will AI-powered financial startups attract more clients? Is Generative AI allowing smaller businesses to grow faster and become major players in their niche?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!