web-intelligence
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Hudson Liao Tried to Automate Himself. The Result Was a Company.
Before Hudson Liao built an AI company around the craft of growth, he spent nearly 15 years learning that craft in places as varied as a firehouse, a finance office, biotech labs and scrappy startups. The Hog is his attempt to bottle the judgment without draining the humanity.
Heka Global
Heka Global is a New York and Tel Aviv based fintech that turns scattered public web signals into structured, explainable consumer profiles for financial institutions. Its AI-driven web intelligence engine helps banks, insurers and pension providers detect fraud, verify identities, reconnect dormant accounts and underwrite thin-file customers - using a proprietary database of millions of records plus live open-web data. Heka raised a $14M Series A in July 2025 led by Windare Ventures with participation from Barclays and Corn`er Banca.
Idan Bar-Dov
Idan Bar-Dov is the co-founder and CEO of Heka Global, a New York and Tel Aviv company that turns the public web into real-time, audit-ready digital identities for banks, insurers, and pension funds. A fintech lawyer turned operator, he started Heka during the pandemic to reconnect people with lost financial assets and grew it into a fraud-fighting web-intelligence engine used by institutions like Barclays and Pictet. In July 2025 Heka closed a $14M Series A led by Windare Ventures, with Bar-Dov arguing that the credit bureaus built for a paper era cannot see a world where both consumers and risk now live online.