How Acoru’s Pre-Emptive Fraud Detection Platform Secured €10M to Combat AI-Powered Financial Crime

Spanish Cybersecurity Innovator Raises Major Funding

Madrid-based cybersecurity platform Acoru has secured €10 million in Series A funding to advance its pioneering approach to predicting and preventing AI-enabled fraud and money laundering. The investment round was led by 33N Ventures with participation from existing investors Adara Ventures and Athos Capital, signaling strong confidence in Acoru’s vision to transform how financial institutions combat increasingly sophisticated financial crimes., according to related news

The AI Fraud Epidemic Demands New Solutions

According to Acoru’s research, fraud scams and bank fraud schemes now cause approximately $500 billion in global losses annually, with generative AI technologies like deepfakes, voice cloning, and social engineering accelerating this trend. “AI has changed the face of fraud and money laundering,” explained Pablo de la Riva Ferrezuelo, CEO and Co-founder of Acoru. “You simply cannot expect technology built in 2010 to combat fraud happening in 2025.”

The company‘s leadership brings decades of combined experience in cybersecurity and fraud prevention, having recognized that traditional systems focused primarily on transactions, events, and sessions were inadequate against modern threats. Existing solutions often fail to detect Authorised Push Payment Fraud, where victims are manipulated into willingly transferring funds to criminal accounts, or identify subtle fraud intent signals before money moves.

Proactive Defense Through Pre-Fraud Detection

Acoru’s distinctive approach centers on predicting financial crime before it occurs through intent-based risk scoring and comprehensive account monitoring. Unlike transaction-centric systems that react to fraudulent activity after it happens, Acoru’s platform continuously evaluates every event across all channels, analyzing not only the target bank account but every account it interacts with., according to recent research

“Scammers today have more powerful tools at their disposal than ever before,” noted de la Riva Ferrezuelo. “Our approach predicts future victims, money mules and accounts at risk of being laundered by detecting the earliest warning signals others can’t see.”, according to related coverage

The Consortium Model: Collective Defense Against Financial Crime

One of Acoru’s most innovative features is its consortium model, which enables banks to exchange account classifications through a centralized network. This creates a truly collaborative defense system where financial institutions can share intelligence about emerging threats and suspicious patterns., according to industry news

The Acoru Account Monitoring Platform classifies every first-party and counterparty account, allowing banks to:, according to further reading

• Predict authorized push payments before they occur
• Prevent fraud and stop scams in their earliest stages
• Protect customers while maintaining regulatory compliance
• Identify and monitor potential money mule accounts

European RegTech Investment Surge

Acoru’s funding aligns with a broader European trend of investment in AI-driven fraud prevention and financial crime solutions. Recent months have seen significant funding rounds for similar platforms across the continent:

• Hawk (Germany) secured €51.8 million for explainable-AI AML and fraud detection
• Trustfull (Italy) raised €6 million to expand its fraud-prevention platform
• Innerworks (UK) collected €3.7 million for AI-powered fraud intelligence
• Resistant AI (Czechia) secured €21 million for document-fraud and transaction monitoring

Acoru’s mid-range Series A particularly highlights Spain’s growing presence in Europe’s FinTech and RegTech investment landscape, demonstrating the country’s emergence as a hub for financial technology innovation.

Regulatory Shifts Driving Innovation

The timing of Acoru’s platform development coincides with significant regulatory changes in the financial sector. New regulations including PS23/4 and the upcoming PSD3 mandate that victims of authorized push payments and unauthorized fraud must be reimbursed, with costs shared 50:50 between sending and receiving banks., as additional insights

These regulatory pressures, combined with the rising sophistication of AI-powered fraud, create urgent demand for solutions that can detect criminal intent earlier and prevent users from becoming unwitting participants in money laundering schemes.

Investor Confidence in Experienced Leadership

Carlos Moreira da Silva, Partner at lead investor 33N Ventures, emphasized the critical nature of the problem Acoru addresses: “Voluntary fraud has become one of the the most damaging and underestimated challenges in today’s financial system. It hurts individuals, families, and institutions alike.”

He particularly highlighted the Acoru team’s capabilities: “What impressed us about Acoru is not just their vision, but the rare combination of deep domain expertise and execution excellence of the founding team. Only an exceptional team could design a platform this comprehensive, easy to deploy, and intelligent.”

Building on Solid Foundations

Founded in 2023 by cybersecurity veterans Pablo de la Riva Ferrezuelo and David Morán, Acoru represents the founders’ second venture in the fraud prevention space. Despite its relatively recent establishment, the company has rapidly built a global team exceeding 30 professionals while demonstrating substantial revenue growth through partnerships with financial institutions of all sizes.

The platform’s architecture, developed by experienced fraud investigators who understand criminal networks and behaviors, connects pre-fraud signals with contextual intelligence across channels within individual banks and throughout the Acoru Consortium network. This enables financial crime teams to selectively block fraudulent transactions in victim accounts while freezing complicit mule and money laundering accounts before funds can be moved.

As AI continues to evolve and empower both defenders and criminals in the financial security landscape, Acoru’s €10 million funding positions the Spanish innovator to expand its proactive defense platform across European markets, potentially setting new standards for how financial institutions collaborate to combat sophisticated financial crime.

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