Germany’s Hawk secures $56m to combat financial crime with AI

By Gloria Methri

Hawk, a German FinTech offering AI-driven anti-money laundering (AML) services, has secured $56 million in Series C funding. The round was led by One Peak, with participation from existing investors, including Macquarie Capital, Rabobank, BlackFin Capital Partners, Sands Capital, DN Capital, Picus, and Coalition.

Hawk currently works with over 80 financial institutions globally, including Tier 1 banks, mid-sized firms, and FinTech. The funding will support product development and global expansion efforts, particularly in the US market.

Hawk enables banks to move beyond the traditional rules-based approach to anti-money laundering and fraud. Traditional systems create significant problems for compliance teams, including huge volumes of false positive alerts that need to be reviewed, which in turn leads to staffing challenges and costs.  At the same time, criminals find ways to subvert the rules, which leads to illicit activity being overlooked. Hawk provides AI-powered technology to dramatically increase accuracy to see more crime while reducing false positives.

According to the company, its solutions have improved alert accuracy and surfaced previously undetected forms of criminal activity.

“AI is in our DNA at Hawk. Our mission is to provide financial institutions with the technology, the expertise and the support that they need to realise the transformative impact that machine learning and generative AI can have across their anti-financial crime operations. This investment enables us to further our mission, and we are grateful to One Peak for their support, as well as the continued trust of our existing investors,” said Tobias Schweiger, CEO of Hawk.

David Klein, Co-founder and Managing Partner at One Peak, said, “The value that Hawk delivers to AML and fraud teams around the world is truly remarkable. Financial institutions of all sizes attest to Hawk’s ability to deliver impressive results, exceptional reliability and collaborative support. Hawk’s technology enables banks to take a much more efficient approach to fighting financial crime, and we’re very excited to be backing Hawk’s world-class team in their next leg of explosive growth.”