Chatbot start-up SplxAI lands $2m amid growing cybersecurity threat

A start-up which helps companies protect against cyberattacks targeting their AI chatbots has raised millions of dollars to fund its expansion.

Sky News understands that SplxAI, which was founded earlier this year, will announce this week that it has secured $2m from investors led by Inovo.vc, South Central Ventures and Runtime Ventures.

The company says it aims to plug "gaping security holes" in conversational AI, with chatbots now used by more than 1.5 billion people globally.

It has built what it describes as an advanced security platform called Probe which can identify vulnerabilities in chatbot systems before they are exposed by cyberattackers.

Angel investors including David Politis, founder of BetterCloud, and Elad Schulman, whose company Segasec was sold to Mimecast, have also invested in SplxAI's pre-seed round.

The issue of AI chatbot security has become increasingly critical as their use has exploded in recent years.

Many large companies now use them in place of armies of customer service agents, although their effectiveness is often mixed.

A number of tech giants, including Microsoft and OpenAI, whose ChatGPT system is the world's most prominent of its kind, have been the subject of data breaches and other cyberattacks.

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SplxAI said it had recently been able to identify 'content bias vulnerabilities' with an IKEA AI assistant which demonstrated ethnic bias in its responses, risking both reputational damage and a loss of customer trust.

The company was founded by Kristian Kamber, a sales executive, and Ante Gojsalić, an AI consultant.

"We're experiencing a paradigm shift in GenAI security, with huge implications for organisations that come under attack," Mr Kamber, SplxAI's chief executive, said.

"As such, there is an ever-growing need for continuous, proactive security systems to keep a constant eye on conversational AI as it is used across businesses, and as a means of communicating with customers."

Research suggests that the market for generative AI security products is likely to grow from $7bn this year to $40bn by 2030.

SplxAI's new funding will be used to accelerate product development, and expand its workforce and operations, particularly in the US.

Karol Lasota, a principal at Inovo.vc, said: "In the AI gold rush, sell shovels - Splx wants to be one of the key shovels in the GenAI space.

"They make sure "shovels", or in this instance chatbots, don't break or act in a way that could be damaging."

Jure Mikuz, managing partner at South Central Ventures, said: "In GenAI-powered industries, cybersecurity tools are the guardians of innovation, shielding sensitive data from cyber threats that evolve as fast as technology itself."