When the call came, Tarini Padmanabhuni’s grandfather believed he was talking to his brother.
The voice, it turned out, was a deepfake: an AI-generated imitation of his brother’s.
According to the FBI, Americans lost close to $900 million to AI-driven scams last year, up 24% from 2024.
In the meantime, the startup already has early revenue, according to Padmanabhuni, and handles more than 100,000 calls a month for financial institutions in India.
The outfit is one of the startups vetted by TechCrunch’s editorial team to compete in its Startup Battlefield competition, taking place at TechCrunch Disrupt October 13 to 15 in downtown San Francisco.
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Summarized version
After her grandfather was scammed by a deepfake of his brother's voice, Tarini Padmanabhuni founded DetectifAI, a San Francisco startup building AI models small enough to run directly on smartphones and flag fake voices in real time.
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The article, shortened and in plain language
When the call came, Tarini Padmanabhuni’s grandfather believed he was talking to his brother. The voice on the other end of the line said his brother had been kidnapped and that the only way to get him back was to pay a ransom. The voice, it turned out, was a deepfake: an AI-generated imitation of his brother’s.
Today, she says, DetectifAI, the San Francisco-based company she founded, aims to ensure that others can’t be hoodwinked the same way.
According to the FBI, Americans lost close to $900 million to AI-driven scams last year, up 24% from 2024.
Rather than shrinking large cloud models to fit on a phone, as some companies do, DetectifAI says it designs compact AI models from the start that are small enough to run inside a smartphone’s operating system. The aim is to deliver an instant verdict on whether a voice is AI-generated during calls, in voice messages, and in other audio, without the audio ever leaving the device.
In the meantime, the startup already has early revenue, according to Padmanabhuni, and handles more than 100,000 calls a month for financial institutions in India.
DetectifAI has so far raised a small seed amount from investors Josh Constine and Manohar Kamath, a principal at the consulting services firm KM Growth. The outfit is one of the startups vetted by TechCrunch’s editorial team to compete in its Startup Battlefield competition, taking place at TechCrunch Disrupt October 13 to 15 in downtown San Francisco.
Astra and Opus just passed Turing’s other test Tim Fernholz.
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