Silent Eight, based in Singapore, desires to be in a place where it is prepared for an IPO by the end of 2025 in order to list on the tech-concentrated Nasdaq in the United States, said Martin Markiewicz, the firm's CEO, to CNBC. The company uses artificial intelligence (AI) to assist financial organizations in battling money laundering and other financial misdeeds. Markiewicz noted to CNBC that he predicts a three-and-a-half-fold increase in revenues for 2023 compared to the prior year.
Martin Markiewicz, CEO of Silent Eight, told CNBC that when it comes to financial crime, banks can be a single bad decision away from a major mess. Such decisions can lead to hefty fines as well as reputational damage if institutions do not take the time and resources necessary to investigate and stop money laundering or terrorist funding.Markiewicz's company uses AI to help financial organizations protect against these issues, saving them resources and keeping them in the good graces of regulators. He explained in an interview at an OTB Ventures conference Thursday that the idea behind Silent Eight's product is that AI should take on this task, eliminating the limitation of having only a certain number of people.The company is expected to triple its revenue this year and turn a profit for the first time, leading Markiewicz to look into a potential U.S. public offering.
Silent Eight's software is built on generative AI, the same technology that powers the widely-known ChatGPT chatbot. However, it is not developed with the same approach. ChatGPT is trained with a single, expansive LLM (large language model) that allows it to provide answers to given prompts. Silent Eight's model is instead based upon multiple, smaller models specialized for varying different tasks. For example, one AI model assesses how names are translated across diverse languages, able to detect an individual potentially opening accounts with variants of their name from different countries. All these smaller models combine to create Silent Eight's software, which a number of major banks including Standard Chartered and HSBC are employing to combat financial crime.
Markiewicz noted that Silent Eight's AI is actually educated with the same methods that human investigators practice within banking entities. Standard Chartered was the first bank to initiate using Silent Eight's software in 2017. In order to train the AI, however, the start-up needed clearance from Standard Chartered to access the bank's risk management data.
“That’s why our strategy was so hazardous,” Markiewicz noted. “We were confident that by building a connection with some large financial institutions first, others would recognize it was a safe option and join us.”
Silent Eight has seen a steady increase in customers, which is allowing them to make continual advancements with the AI. According to Markiewicz, for companies that purchase the software, it costs "orders of magnitude" less than the payroll necessary to achieve the same result with people. Silent Eight's home office is located in Singapore, while there are satellite branches in New York, London, and Warsaw, Poland.
Markiewicz told CNBC that he forecasts revenue to increase by more than three-and-a-half times in 2023 in comparison to last year, without specifying a figure. He mentioned that Silent Eight will be profitable this year, citing HSBC, Standard Chartered and First Abu Dhabi Bank as some of the dozen or so customers.The CEO said that Silent Eight is not looking to raise money after the $40 million round of funding last year, with TYH Ventures heading it and HSBC Ventures, OTB Ventures and Standard Chartered's investment arm taking part.He added that Silent Eight plans to get "IPO ready" by the end of 2025 and considers a listing on the technology-oriented Nasdaq in the U.S. However, this doesn't mean that they will be obligated to go public in 2025. Markiewicz declared that he wishes to have the possibility for Silent Eight to go public, indicating that they would need to have finances reported similar to those of a publicly traded company.
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