The agentic risk platform unifying device intelligence, fraud prevention and AML for banks and fintechs
HQ: San Francisco, California, USA (some private-market databases list a Miami, Florida registration) | Founded: 2020 | Employees: ~350–400 (LinkedIn lists 386 employees, Oct 2026; PitchBook 361; Tracxn 381; Revelio Labs ~239 as of Mar 2026 — datasets disagree) | Stage: Series C (Private) | Website: https://sardine.ai
Sardine is a San Francisco-based risk infrastructure company that sells a single platform covering device and network intelligence, identity onboarding (KYC/KYB, document and bank verification), real-time payment-fraud scoring, AML transaction monitoring, sanctions screening, case management and credit underwriting — increasingly delivered through AI agents that triage alerts and draft SARs. The company was co-founded in April 2020 by CEO Soups Ranjan, previously Head of Financial Crime at Revolut and Head of Risk at Coinbase (PhD, Rice University), Aditya 'Adi' Goel, COO (ex-PIMCO, DB1 Ventures, Revolut US), and Zahid Shaikh, Chief Product Officer, who built PayPal's device-intelligence product.
The product thesis is unification: fraud and AML data historically lived in separate stacks, so Sardine stitches device fingerprints (6.5B+ profiled), behavior biometrics, bank-transaction feeds across ACH/wires/RTP/FedNow/Zelle and identity signals into one real-time score and case workspace, wrapped in a rules engine, ML models, a connections graph and Sardine Flow orchestration. Its Sonar consortium (launched 2023 as SardineX) lets banks, fintechs and merchants share anonymized fraud signals under USA PATRIOT Act 314(b) and GLBA frameworks, with founding members including Visa and Square.
Commercially, Sardine serves 450+ enterprises spanning marketplaces and payroll (Checkout.com, GoDaddy, Deel), fintechs (Brex, Nubank, Kalshi, bunq) and banks (Live Oak Bank, LHV Pank, National Bank of Canada). It has raised $170M from a16z, Activant Capital, Visa, GV, Experian Ventures, Moody's Analytics, FIS and National Bank of Canada, and reported 130% ARR growth in 2024. Absolute revenue and valuation marks beyond February 2025 ($660M per Bloomberg) are not publicly disclosed.
Sardine's founding insight came from the operator's seat: Soups Ranjan built Revolut's financial-crime function and ran risk at Coinbase, and the platform he wished existed would fuse device and network telemetry with bank-account and identity data in one real-time decision. That is what Sardine sells today — device intelligence and behavior biometrics (6.5B+ profiled devices, company-reported), Global KYC/KYB, payment-fraud scoring across ACH, wires, RTP, FedNow and Zelle, card-issuing fraud, AML transaction monitoring, sanctions screening, case management and credit underwriting, plus AI agents (SAR generation, sanctions screening, doc KYC) sold as 'agentic fraud and AML ops.'
The trajectory is real but early relative to incumbents: $170M raised across a 2021 seed, a $19.5M Series A (a16z, Feb 2022), a $51.5M Series B (a16z Growth, Sept 2022), a $70M Series C at a $660M valuation (Activant, Feb 2025) and a $25M extension led by National Bank of Canada in May 2026, which also became a multi-year customer deploying Sardine across retail, commercial and wealth. 130% ARR growth in 2024 (company-reported), 450+ enterprise customers and Forrester Wave Leader status (Q3 2026) mark the shift from fintech/crypto specialist to bank-grade vendor. The Sonar consortium (formerly SardineX, 314(b)-compliant sharing with Visa, Square and others) is the most differentiated asset — a network effect point-solution rivals lack.
The risks are structural. Fraud detection is an arms race supercharged by generative AI and agentic bots; consolidation has already put Featurespace inside Visa and Recorded Future inside Mastercard, so Sardine competes with network-owned bundles. Its early base skews fintech and crypto — a budget-cycle exposure the FTX era made concrete. Revenue and valuation marks after February 2025 are undisclosed or database-derived, and bank sales cycles are long. Agentic ops and the NBC-style bank land-and-expand motion have to carry the next round.
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