Brothers Patrick and Ryan Coughlin, both distinguished veterans of the tech industry, have unveiled an innovative security startup. Patrick’s career spans national cyber defense, Splunk, and Cisco, while Ryan contributed to consumer products at Apple and Spotify.
Their new venture, Savi Security, aims to shield everyday individuals from the rapidly evolving threat of highly convincing AI-generated scams, whether they manifest as deceptive texts, emails, or phone calls.
The company recently secured $7 million in seed funding and is set to launch its dedicated app for iPhone and Android this Tuesday. The funding round was spearheaded by Acrew Capital, with additional investments from Magnify Ventures, TTCER, and Resolute Ventures.
The profound catalyst for the company’s inception was a harrowing personal incident involving the founders’ mother.
Approximately two years ago, Patrick Coughlin received a distressed call from his mother, who recounted a phone call she had just received from a man claiming to have kidnapped Coughlin’s sister. At the time, Patrick held the position of senior vice president of security products at Cisco, a role he attained after Splunk acquired his cloud security startup, TruSTAR, for a reported $82 million in May 2021. Cisco later acquired Splunk in 2024.
Coughlin vividly recalled the incident: her mobile phone displayed her daughter’s caller ID. During the call, “she thinks she hears my sister’s voice saying, ‘Mom, they’ve got me.’ There’s a blood-curdling scream, and then my sister says, ‘You’ve got to do what they tell you.’ And then a man comes on the phone and says, ‘If you don’t pay us $1,200 right now, we’re going to kill your daughter in the parking lot of the local Walmart,’” he recounted.
The scammer had meticulously spoofed Coughlin’s sister’s phone number and voice, even referencing the specific Walmart location she frequently visited.
Fortunately, his mother maintained her composure, contacted her daughter directly, and confirmed her safety. The terrifying kidnapping threat was, in fact, an AI-generated scam.
Patrick Coughlin, much like his mother, was deeply shaken by the experience.
“What I was thinking, after calming my mom down is: What has fundamentally changed in the underlying cybercriminal economy that we are now able to lever the same kind of sophistication that I had seen pointed at government agencies, and then later at Fortune 500 companies? And now we’re deploying that sophistication at the consumer?” he pondered.
The unequivocal answer, of course, lies in the proliferation of inexpensive yet potent large language models (LLMs) and other generative AI tools.
Prior to the advent of AI, orchestrating such elaborate consumer scams was not financially viable. It demanded extensive target research and specialized technology for voice spoofing, making these attacks predominantly reserved for high-value targets like enterprises or governments, as was the sophisticated defense technology against them.
“There’s something that’s happening right now to consumers with AI in the hands of cyber criminals,” Coughlin emphasized. The costs associated with perpetrating these swindles have become negligible, and the necessary research material is now readily accessible.
“You can clone a voice off three seconds of audio, off a publicly available social media post. So we’ve all got these traces of stuff that’s out there in the ether — like where we’re talking or narrating; commenting on a kid’s football game while videotaping it, and putting it on Facebook,” he explained.
The FTC reported last month that individuals collectively lost $3.5 billion to imposter scams in 2025, a threefold increase from 2020. While older Americans constitute the majority of reported victims, some studies indicate that Gen Z is also highly susceptible. Research from 2025 by Malwarebytes, a provider of antivirus and anti-malware solutions, revealed that Gen Z was more frequently targeted by text scams than other generations, falling victim approximately 25% of the time.
The Coughlin brothers’ vision was to develop a real-time intervention tool to combat these evolving threats.
They validated their concept and the AI scam detection model they were developing by launching a free, anonymous website called Scam Wise, requiring no registration. Users can upload any suspicious texts, photos, or emails, and Scam Wise will assess their likelihood of being fraudulent.
“We launched that about four months ago. We’ve had 50,000 submissions, and it grows now every week by about 10,000 submissions or more,” Coughlin noted, highlighting its rapid adoption.
Scam Wise proved to be an invaluable source of real-world data, instrumental in training Savi’s sophisticated scam-detection AI model. While the startup primarily leverages Google’s Gemini, its software is built on an AI gateway, enabling it to seamlessly integrate other AI models, such as those specialized in voice detection, as required.
This Tuesday marks the official launch of Savi’s paid consumer app for iOS and Android, designed to screen texts, voicemails, and incoming calls for potential scams.
While many products offer similar features (including Malwarebytes), Savi’s most compelling innovation is its live call monitoring capability.
During a suspicious phone conversation, a user can opt to include the app’s live agent as a silent listener. Savi then actively monitors for behavioral cues that can identify a fraudulent situation in real-time, as the call progresses.
Savi’s pricing model is also distinct. It offers coverage for an entire family at $8 per month, or a discounted annual rate of $63, with no cap on the number of users. This single plan can encompass children, a spouse, parents, and even that relative who consistently requires tech assistance, or anyone else the primary account holder wishes to add and manage.
AI has fundamentally altered “how accessible being a fraudster is,” Coughlin asserted. “We’re creating fraudsters because we’re bringing down the barrier of deceiving people. So not only do we have the organized criminals and the syndicates behind this, but everyday people are sort of being tempted into playing fraud.”
Savi Security’s solution emerges as a new generation of anti-virus-like software: one that leverages AI in real-time, mirroring the very tactics employed by cybercriminals themselves.
The Editorial Staff at AIChief is a team of professional content writers with extensive experience in AI and marketing. Founded in 2025, AIChief has quickly grown into the largest free AI resource hub in the industry.