# Naftali Harris

> Naftali Harris is the Co-Founder and CEO of SentiLink, a San Francisco-based identity verification and fraud prevention company that helps over 400 financial institutions - including 10 of the 15 largest U.S. banks - detect synthetic identities and application fraud in real time. A Stanford-trained statistician who left his PhD program to become Affirm's first data scientist, Harris co-founded SentiLink in 2017 after seeing sophisticated fraud schemes up close. The company has raised $84 million in total funding, verifies over 3 million identities daily, and has been recognized by Forbes 30 Under 30 and American Banker's 2024 Innovators of the Year.

- **Role:** Co-Founder and CEO at SentiLink
- **Organizations:** SentiLink, Affirm, Twitter, Kaggle, University of Chicago, Stanford University
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** BA in Statistics, University of Chicago, MA in Statistics (Stanford Graduate Fellow, PhD program - did not complete), Stanford University
- **Known for:** Forbes 30 Under 30 (Finance, 2025), American Banker's 2024 Innovators of the Year, FICO Industry Vanguard Decision Award (2026) for SentiLink's Identity Theft Score

## Career timeline

- **2012-2014** — Stanford Graduate Fellow pursuing PhD in Statistics; left to join Affirm
- **~2013** — Data Science Intern at Kaggle - designed and launched predictive modeling competitions
- **~2013** — Data Science Intern at Twitter - implemented new ML algorithm with 15x speedup; built tweet topic models
- **2014** — Joined Affirm as first data scientist, recruited by founder Max Levchin
- **2014-2017** — Built and led Risk Decisioning team at Affirm; encountered sophisticated synthetic fraud schemes
- **2017** — Co-founded SentiLink with Maxwell Blumenfeld (Affirm alumni)
- **2021** — Led SentiLink's $70M Series B funding round (Craft Ventures, Felicis, a16z, NYCA Partners)
- **2024** — Named American Banker's Innovators of the Year
- **2025** — Named Forbes 30 Under 30, Finance category
- **2025** — SentiLink achieved FedRAMP Ready status
- **2026** — Served as Forbes 30 Under 30 judge; SentiLink's Identity Theft Score won FICO Industry Vanguard Decision Award

## Achievements

- Forbes 30 Under 30 (Finance, 2025)
- American Banker's 2024 Innovators of the Year
- FICO Industry Vanguard Decision Award (2026) for SentiLink's Identity Theft Score
- Built SentiLink to serve 400+ financial institutions including 10 of the 15 largest U.S. banks
- SentiLink verifies over 3 million identities daily
- Raised $84M in total venture funding for SentiLink
- First data scientist hired at Affirm (Max Levchin's fintech unicorn)
- SentiLink achieved FedRAMP Ready status (May 2025)
- Created Tauthon - popular open source Python 2/3 compatibility project on GitHub

## Latest updates

- **2026-01** — SentiLink's Identity Theft Score wins FICO Industry Vanguard Decision Award
- **2026-02** — SentiLink appoints Kathleen Waid as Chief Revenue Officer
- **2025-05** — SentiLink achieves FedRAMP Ready status
- **2025-01** — Named to Forbes 30 Under 30, Finance category

## Links

- Website: https://www.naftaliharris.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/naftaliharris/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/sentilink
- GitHub: https://github.com/naftaliharris

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/naftali-harris
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-25