Ajit Tharaken is the CEO of Consilient, a Washington, D.C. fintech building federated-learning AI to catch financial crime without ever moving a bank's data. A Columbia-trained computer scientist, he previously ran Opus Global (Alacra) through its sale to NICE Actimize, then led NICE Actimize's Data Intelligence business. He pitches a blunt thesis: the global anti-money-laundering system is outdated, and the fix is letting institutions train AI models locally and share the intelligence, not the data.
Alexandre Berkovic is the co-founder and CEO of Sphinx (YC F24), a San Francisco company building browser-native AI agents that do the grunt work of financial compliance - the KYC, AML and KYB checks that banks and fintechs run millions of times a year. He trained as a Design Engineer at Imperial College London and studied machine learning at MIT, did research on multi-modal generative AI, and co-founded and exited an audio-generation startup, Adorno AI, before pivoting into compliance with co-founder Chrisjan Wust. In February 2026 Sphinx raised a $7.1M seed led by Cherry Ventures.
Austin Trombley is the founder and CEO of Satschel, Inc., the Whitefish, Montana parent company behind Liquidity.io (a regulated tokenized trading platform), Simplici (KYC/AML onboarding and compliance), and ARQ Securities. A software engineer turned fintech executive, he co-founded the machine-learning hedge fund Random Forest Capital, which Franklin Templeton acquired roughly 15 months in, then served as VP of Blockchain & AI at Franklin Templeton and EVP at the payments company SpotOn before building Satschel's stack for bringing private credit and private equity onto public blockchains.
Rhim Shah is the co-founder and CEO of Arva AI, a Y Combinator and Google AI Fund-backed startup building auditable AI agents that automate financial crime compliance reviews for banks and fintechs. An Oxford engineering graduate who led the FinCrime product team at Revolut Business, he spent hundreds of hours shadowing compliance analysts before deciding the mundane, repetitive work of AML, KYB and KYC could be done faster and deeper by AI. Arva now automates as much as 80-92% of manual review work and counts leading UK and US banks among its customers.
Trulioo is a Vancouver-based global identity platform that helps banks, fintechs, marketplaces and crypto firms verify both people and businesses in seconds. Through a single API it combines KYC, KYB, AML watchlist screening, document and biometric verification, and credit decisioning, drawing on data sources that reach billions of people and hundreds of millions of businesses worldwide. The pitch is simple: prove who - and what - you are dealing with, anywhere on earth, without stitching together a dozen regional vendors.
AvenCell Therapeutics is a clinical-stage cell therapy company building switchable, universal CAR-T treatments that can be turned 'off' and 'on' even after they are inside a patient. By pairing this controllable switch with a CRISPR-engineered, off-the-shelf allogeneic platform, AvenCell aims to widen the narrow safety window of conventional CAR-T while cutting the cost and wait time of manufacturing, targeting hard-to-treat blood cancers like AML, B-cell malignancies and, increasingly, autoimmune disease.
BlossomHill Therapeutics is a San Diego clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company designing small-molecule precision medicines for cancer and autoimmune disease. Founded in 2020 by drug designer J. Jean Cui and biotech veteran Y. Peter Li - the team behind Turning Point Therapeutics (acquired by Bristol Myers Squibb in 2022) - the company is advancing a wholly-owned pipeline led by BH-30643, a first-in-class macrocyclic OMNI-EGFR inhibitor for EGFR-mutant non-small cell lung cancer, and BH-30236, a CLK inhibitor targeting aberrant RNA splicing in AML and high-risk MDS.
ComplyAdvantage is a London-founded RegTech company that uses AI and machine learning to help banks, fintechs and other regulated businesses detect and prevent financial crime. Its flagship Mesh platform combines a proprietary, real-time database of sanctions, watchlists, politically exposed persons (PEPs) and adverse media with customer screening, transaction monitoring, payment screening and fraud detection - automating the heavy, error-prone work of anti-money-laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) compliance for more than 3,000 enterprises across roughly 75 countries.
Edgewood Oncology is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing BTX-A51, a first-in-class oral small-molecule multi-kinase inhibitor that co-targets casein kinase 1 alpha (CK1α) and cyclin-dependent kinases 7 and 9 (CDK7/CDK9) - three master regulators of cancer cell survival and transcription. Founded by veteran biotech executive David N. Cook and emerging from stealth in March 2024 with $20M in Series A financing from Alta Partners, the company is advancing BTX-A51 through Phase 2a trials in relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukemia and genetically-defined (GATA3-mutant) ER+/HER2- metastatic breast cancer.
David N. Cook, Ph.D., is the founder and CEO of Edgewood Oncology, a Boston-based virtual biotech advancing BTX-A51, a first-in-class small molecule that hits three master regulators of cancer at once (CK1 alpha, CDK7 and CDK9) to switch on programmed cell death. A chemist by training, with an A.B. from Harvard and a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, Cook has spent roughly 30 years building venture-backed life sciences companies, helping raise more than $1 billion, leading three IPOs, orchestrating two acquisitions, and contributing to five commercialized products. He emerged Edgewood from stealth in March 2024 with a $20 million Series A led by Alta Partners.
Wugen is a clinical-stage biotechnology company in St. Louis engineering off-the-shelf, allogeneic cell therapies for cancer. Spun out of Washington University in St. Louis in 2018, it builds CRISPR-edited CAR-T cells and cytokine-induced memory NK cells designed to be manufactured once from healthy donors and delivered to many patients. Its lead program, WU-CART-007 (soficabtagene geleucel), is a CD7-targeted allogeneic CAR-T in a pivotal trial for relapsed/refractory T-cell leukemia and lymphoma, carrying FDA Breakthrough Therapy, RMAT, Fast Track, Orphan Drug and Rare Pediatric Disease designations.
BlueSphere Bio is a Pittsburgh-based clinical-stage biotechnology company developing personalized T-cell receptor (TCR) therapies for cancer. Spun out of the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC Enterprises in 2017, the company's proprietary TCXpress platform rapidly discovers and screens natural T-cell receptors that can target cancer antigens hidden inside cells - a reach beyond what conventional CAR-T therapies achieve. Its lead programs target high-risk hematologic malignancies such as relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukemia.
Castellum.AI is a New York-based regulatory technology company that automates anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer compliance for banks, credit unions, fintechs and crypto firms. Its platform pairs in-house risk data drawn from 200,000+ global sources with explainable AI agents that screen for sanctions, politically exposed persons and adverse media, cutting alert volume by 94% and review time by 83% out of the box. Founded by a former U.S. Treasury sanctions officer, the company raised an $8.5M Series A in July 2025 led by Curql.
Sigma360 is a New York-based risk intelligence company that helps banks, payment firms, fintechs and global corporations detect and manage financial crime. Its cloud-native, AI-powered platform unifies global risk data, proprietary intelligence, core screening technology and automation to surface direct and network-based risk at sub-second speed, cut false positives, and run perpetual KYC, sanctions and adverse media screening. Founded in 2017 as Sigma Ratings, the company protects more than $2 trillion in assets and company value.
Vatsa Narasimha is the CEO of ComplyAdvantage, the London-based regtech building AI-native tools to detect and disrupt financial crime. A ceramics engineer turned consultant turned operator, he ran foreign-exchange platform OANDA before joining ComplyAdvantage as COO/CFO in 2018, then taking the top job in 2022. He has pushed the company past $100M in funding, 3,000+ enterprise customers, and a billion-plus searches a year, while reframing compliance as an asymmetric fight that only AI-native systems can win.
Peter Piatetsky is the co-founder and CEO of Castellum.AI, a New York compliance-technology company that automates AML/KYC screening for banks, credit unions, fintechs and crypto firms. A former US Treasury sanctions officer who once fined banks and froze illicit assets, he started Castellum after a month of staring at 38,000 compliance alerts that surfaced exactly one real threat. The company builds its own financial-crime data pipeline, refreshes it every five minutes, and routinely corrects errors in government sanctions lists. In July 2025 Castellum raised an oversubscribed $8.5M Series A led by credit-union and bank-backed funds.
Stuart Jones Jr. is the co-founder and CEO of Sigma360, an AI-powered risk intelligence platform fighting financial crime for banks, payment providers and globally exposed corporations. A former senior U.S. Treasury official who chased illicit money through Afghanistan and the Arabian Gulf after 9/11, he turned a counterterrorism playbook into enterprise software. In March 2026 his company closed an oversubscribed $17.3M Series B, having reached profitability and the now protecting more than $2 trillion in assets.
Maite Muniz Telleria is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Truora Inc., a San Francisco- and Colombia-based startup that helps Latin American businesses verify identities, run background checks, and automate customer engagement via WhatsApp. A former McKinsey consultant turned startup builder, she left corporate strategy to co-found Truora in 2018 alongside Daniel Bilbao, David Cuadrado, and Cesar Pino. Under her product leadership, Truora scaled from a single-country MVP to a multi-country platform serving clients like Bancolombia, Didi, Mercado Libre, and Rappi, raising $15M in a Series A led by Accel and BBVA's Propel fund in 2022. Maite is also an angel investor focused on women-led ventures and a board member of The F Code.
Incode is an AI-powered identity verification platform that lets businesses confirm who is really on the other side of a screen — in under two seconds. Founded in San Francisco in 2015, the company has built a modular biometric platform used by banks, hotels, hospitals, and gaming companies across more than 190 countries. Its flagship product, Incode Omni, handles everything from document verification and facial recognition to AML screening and liveness detection, processing more than 100 million user verifications per year. Backed by General Atlantic, SoftBank, J.P. Morgan, and Capital One Ventures at a $1.25 billion valuation, Incode has been named a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader for Identity Verification two consecutive years running.
Middesk is a San Francisco-based business identity platform that helps banks, fintechs, lenders, and marketplaces verify the businesses they transact with. Its KYB APIs turn the slow, paper-heavy process of vetting a company into a real-time decision, powering onboarding at firms like Brex, Plaid, Mercury, Gusto, Affirm, and Shopify.
Adi Goel is co-founder and COO of Sardine, an AI-powered fraud and compliance platform that has screened over $1.36 trillion in payments for 300+ enterprise customers across 70+ countries. Before Sardine, he scaled Revolut's entire US business from zero to millions of customers and led product strategy at Deutsche Börse managing a $200M fintech fund. A Wharton MBA and IIT Delhi engineer, Goel brings rare cross-disciplinary range across quantitative finance, product, and operations to building fintech infrastructure.
Cesar Pino is the co-founder of Truora Inc., a Y Combinator-backed identity verification and fraud prevention platform built for Latin America. An electronic engineer with a specialization in cryptography from Universidad del Valle in Colombia, Pino previously worked as a fullstack engineer at Twilio before co-founding Truora in 2018 with Daniel Bilbao, David Cuadrado, and Maite Muniz Telleria. Truora helps companies across 9+ Latin American countries onboard users digitally through background checks, facial recognition, KYC/AML compliance, and WhatsApp-powered customer engagement - serving clients like Rappi, Bancolombia, Mercado Libre, and Uber. The company has raised ~$40M in total funding including a $15M Series A led by BBVA's Propel fund and Accel.
Daniel Bilbao is the co-founder and CEO of Truora Inc., a San Francisco-based identity verification and digital onboarding platform serving Latin America. Born in Cali, Colombia, Bilbao studied electronic engineering at Universidad de los Andes and earned an MBA from Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth before stints at Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Silicon Valley startups. He founded Truora in 2018 alongside David Cuadrado, Maite Muniz Telleria, and Cesar Pino, solving a problem he knew firsthand: background checks in Latin America took up to three weeks. Truora compresses that to under 20 seconds. The company has raised ~$40M in total funding including a $15M Series A led by Accel and BBVA's Propel fund in 2022, grew revenue to $32.1M in 2024, reached break-even, and expanded to seven countries. Beyond Truora, Bilbao co-founded Colombia Tech Week and the B2 Founders seed fund with his brother Andres Bilbao, co-founder of Rappi.
Emily Garza is a customer success executive, founder, and one of the most recognized voices in the CS profession. As Head of Customer Engagement at Unit21 - an AI-powered fraud and AML risk platform trusted by 200+ financial institutions - she oversees the entire post-sale customer journey. She is also the founder of ValueCSwithEmily, a platform and community that produces podcasts, articles, and resources for CS professionals. Named a Top 25 Customer Success Influencer in 2023 and a Top 100 CS Strategist in 2021 and 2022, Garza built her career scaling CS organizations from the ground up at companies like Fastly and Proton.ai, growing recurring revenue from $60M to $300M+ at Fastly alone.
Kurt Ruppel is the Co-Founder and CTO of Middesk, the business identity platform that helps financial institutions, fintechs, and marketplaces verify and onboard businesses in seconds rather than weeks. A UC Berkeley cognitive science alumnus turned engineer, he built his technical chops at Zendesk and Checkr before co-founding Middesk with Kyle Mack in 2018. The company went through Y Combinator's Winter 2019 batch, secured a $4M seed led by Accel and Sequoia before Demo Day ended, and raised a $57M Series B in 2022—bringing total funding to over $77M. Ruppel leads Middesk's technical vision, focusing on primitives and forward concepts that transform raw business data into actionable intelligence for the financial ecosystem.
Kyle Mack is the CEO and Co-founder of Middesk, the business identity platform that's modernizing how financial institutions and fintechs verify and trust the companies they work with. Founded in 2018 after Mack witnessed firsthand the painful manual process of customer credentialing at Checkr, Middesk has grown into a category-defining KYB infrastructure company backed by Sequoia Capital, Accel, Insight Partners, and Canapi Ventures with $77M+ in total funding. The company serves hundreds of enterprise clients - including two of the top three U.S. banks and fintechs like Plaid, Affirm, Brex, and Shopify - by connecting to roughly 400 U.S. government agencies to surface real-time business identity intelligence. Mack is also a Sequoia Scout, investing in early-stage founders.
Rahul Raina is the Co-Founder and CTO of TRM Labs, a blockchain intelligence company that helps governments, financial institutions, and crypto businesses detect and investigate financial crime on the blockchain. Born out of a failed game startup, TRM Labs now serves 600+ government agencies across 75+ countries, achieved unicorn status in February 2026 with a $70M Series C at a $1B valuation, and is recognized as a leading force in making the crypto ecosystem safer. Rahul was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2022.
Rick Song is the Co-Founder and CEO of Persona, the identity verification platform trusted by OpenAI, Instacart, LinkedIn, and 3,000+ others. A self-described reluctant founder, he left Square in 2018 after five years working on fraud and identity products, convinced there was a better way to build identity infrastructure. By 2025, Persona had completed 300+ million verifications, crossed $100M ARR, raised a $200M Series D at a $2B valuation, and was named a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader for Identity Verification for the second consecutive year.
Ricardo Amper is the Founder and CEO of Incode Technologies, a San Francisco-based AI-powered identity verification unicorn valued at $1.25 billion. A Mexican-born serial entrepreneur with two prior exits totaling ~$200 million, Amper built Incode from a near-failed social media startup into a global leader in biometric authentication and KYC/AML compliance — processing over 4 billion identity checks for clients including Citi, Nubank, Ford Credit, and government agencies. He is a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer contributor, a champion of Gen Z hiring, and the driving force behind Incode's DeepSight deepfake-detection platform.
Persona is a San Francisco-based identity infrastructure company that helps businesses verify people - and increasingly, AI agents - online. Its configurable platform powers KYC, KYB, AML, age verification, and ongoing trust-and-safety workflows for fintechs, marketplaces, crypto exchanges, and AI platforms across 200+ countries.