# Soups Ranjan

> Soups Ranjan is the co-founder and CEO of Sardine, an agentic AI platform for financial crime prevention and AML compliance headquartered in San Francisco. With a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Rice University and career stints at Coinbase (as Head of Risk) and Revolut (Head of Financial Crime), he channeled over 15 years of fraud-fighting expertise into Sardine, which has raised $145.6M and grown to 300+ enterprise customers. Sardine's behavioral biometrics and device intelligence platform now profiles 2.2+ billion devices, making it one of the most comprehensive financial crime databases in existence.

- **Role:** Co-founder & CEO at Sardine
- **Organizations:** Sardine, Revolut, Coinbase, Yelp, Narus Inc, Rice University
- **Nationality:** Indian-American
- **Education:** BTech in Computer Science & Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University
- **Known for:** Co-founded Sardine which has raised $145.6M in total funding including $70M Series C (February 2025), Built Sardine's network to profile 2.2+ billion devices - one of the largest financial crime databases globally, Achieved 130% YoY ARR growth at Sardine with 300+ enterprise customers including FIS, Deel, GoDaddy, and X

## Career timeline

- **1996-2000** — BTech in Computer Science at IIT Kharagpur
- **2000-2005** — MS and PhD at Rice University; thesis on scaling web services against application-layer DDoS attacks
- **2005-2015** — Cybersecurity and ML roles at Silicon Valley companies including Narus Inc. (later acquired by Boeing) and Yelp (click fraud prevention)
- **2015-2019** — Joined Coinbase as one of the first 15 engineers; rose to Head of Risk and Director of Data Science, scaling fraud prevention systems 1000x and building ML algorithms from scratch
- **2015-2018** — Founded RiskSalon.org, a roundtable forum for risk professionals that grew to 4,000 members across San Francisco and Seattle
- **2019-2020** — Head of Crypto and Head of Financial Crime at Revolut; launched first US regulatory-compliant crypto product and built fraud/compliance stack from scratch
- **2020** — Co-founded Sardine with Aditya Goel and Zahid Shaikh after leaving Revolut in April 2020; raised $4.6M seed round
- **2021** — Sardine announced Series A funding
- **2023** — Sardine raised Series B; grew enterprise customer base
- **2025** — Sardine raised $70M Series C led by Activant Capital; 130% YoY ARR growth, 300+ enterprise customers, 2.2B+ devices profiled
- **2026** — Sardine partnered with Modulr for real-time AI-enabled fraud detection in automated payments

## Achievements

- Co-founded Sardine which has raised $145.6M in total funding including $70M Series C (February 2025)
- Built Sardine's network to profile 2.2+ billion devices - one of the largest financial crime databases globally
- Achieved 130% YoY ARR growth at Sardine with 300+ enterprise customers including FIS, Deel, GoDaddy, and X
- Was among Coinbase's first 15 employees; scaled fraud prevention systems 1000x
- Built RiskSalon.org - a risk professional roundtable that grew to 4,000 members
- Founded Sardine with backing from Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, Visa, Nyca Partners, and Activant Capital
- Launched Revolut's first US regulatory-compliant crypto product
- Sardine named to Forbes' Best Startup Employers list
- Speaker at McKinsey, QCon New York, O'Reilly AI Conference, NACHA Payments, and AML Intelligence Summit

## Latest updates

- **2026-04** — Sardine partnered with Modulr to bring real-time AI-enabled fraud detection to automated payments
- **2025-02** — Sardine raised $70M Series C led by Activant Capital, with participation from a16z, GV, Visa, Nyca Partners, and others
- **2025-02** — Featured in McKinsey 'Talking Banking Matters' interview on financial crime prevention and agentic commerce
- **2024-12** — Appeared on Fraudology Podcast discussing AI-driven scams and fraud prevention with host Karisse Hendrick
- **2024-01** — Sardine achieved 130% YoY ARR growth and nearly doubled its customer base in 2024

## Links

- Website: https://sardine.ai
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/soupsranjan
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/soupsranjan

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/soups-ranjan
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-22