AI Takes on the Money Launderers: Tangos Raises $20 Million
The Israeli startup is building autonomous AI investigators to uncover hidden financial crime networks
Photo: Nurit Cohen
Financial crime has become a global network problem, and Israeli startup Tangos believes AI can become the next generation of investigators. The company, which develops autonomous AI tools for financial crime investigations, has raised $20 million in a seed funding round led by Red Dot Capital Partners.
The round included Leaders Fund, Clarim, Venture Israel, Signal Fire, Clutch Capital, and Selah Ventures, alongside a strategic investment from Bright Data.
Founded in 2025 by serial entrepreneur Eyal Azoulay, Tangos is developing AI agents designed to perform complex investigations that traditionally require large teams of compliance analysts and financial crime experts.
While banks and financial institutions have invested heavily in systems that identify suspicious activity, the investigation phase remains a major bottleneck. Rising alert volumes, stricter regulations, and a shortage of experienced investigators often force organizations to focus on only a fraction of potential cases.
Tangos’ platform is designed to investigate those cases by analyzing relationships between companies, accounts, individuals, and business entities; validating information from multiple sources; and generating evidence-based investigative reports with audit trails.
The technology targets areas including anti-money laundering, fraud detection, sanctions compliance, and national security investigations.
The company’s team combines expertise from financial crime enforcement, intelligence, banking, and artificial intelligence, including former officials from the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and members of Israel’s national security community.
“Organizations have made significant progress in detecting risk, but the investigation process remains one of the largest operational bottlenecks,” said Azoulay, CEO and founder of Tangos. “We built Tangos to bring the speed and scale of autonomous AI to a process that has historically depended on manual work.”
Tangos said it is already supporting financial institutions and intelligence organizations in high-stakes investigations.