Hawk, the Munich-based AI-driven compliance platform, has announced a $56 million Series C funding round to accelerate its mission of transforming how financial institutions detect and prevent money laundering, sanctions breaches, and fraud. The round was led by One Peak and supported by prominent investors such as Macquarie Capital, Rabobank, BlackFin Capital Partners, Sands Capital, DN Capital, Picus Capital, and Coalition.
With this new investment, Hawk will continue developing its modular compliance platform, investing in capabilities like real-time transaction monitoring, scalable fraud detection, and deeper integrations with third-party data providers. It also plans to grow its team, particularly in the US, where it sees major opportunities to support banks and fintechs struggling with outdated compliance technology.
Solves the compliance conundrum
Traditional rules-based systems remain the norm in many banks and financial institutions, but they’re no longer fit for purpose. These older systems typically generate massive volumes of false positive alerts, overwhelming compliance teams and leading to spiralling costs and inefficiencies. Even worse, savvy criminals can often exploit the rigidity of such systems, slipping through undetected.
Hawk offers a smarter alternative. Its AI-powered platform reduces false positives while increasing detection rates for genuine financial crime. The key lies in combining classic rules with explainable AI and machine learning algorithms that adapt to new threats but remain transparent and auditable for regulatory purposes.
Ends financial crime
Founded in 2018 by Tobias Schweiger and Wolfgang Berner, Hawk is a provider of AI-supported anti-money laundering and fraud prevention technology. Banks, payment providers, and FinTechs can utilise Hawk’s combination of traditional rules and explainable AI to improve the effectiveness of their AML compliance and fraud prevention by identifying more crime, while reportedly maximising efficiency by reducing false positives.
It has quickly become the compliance solution of choice for more than 80 customers globally. These range from Tier 1 banks to digital-first fintechs, including Ecobank, Vodafone, Worldline, VR Payment, VakifBank International, Volt, and Synctera. Its customer base reflects the growing appetite for advanced technology capable of navigating today’s increasingly complex regulatory environments.
AI and explainability: A winning combination
One of Hawk’s key differentiators is its focus on explainable AI. Many AI systems operate as black boxes, but Hawk’s technology is designed to show compliance teams why an alert was triggered, a vital requirement for auditors, regulators, and internal governance teams. This balance between innovation and accountability makes Hawk particularly well-suited to the demands of highly regulated financial environments.
Redefining compliance in the AI era
As criminals become more agile and financial crime grows more complex, the need for intelligent, responsive compliance systems has never been greater. Hawk is positioning itself as a new standard in financial crime detection, one that’s accurate, scalable, and trusted by institutions across the globe.
By combining AI sophistication with regulatory clarity, Hawk is setting a new benchmark for the industry, challenging the status quo, and giving compliance teams the tools they need to stay ahead of evolving threats.
“Every financial institution that wants to reduce compliance workloads and increase the accuracy of risk detection should be using AI to achieve those goals,” said Tobias Schweiger, CEO of Hawk. “The results are compelling—we’ve been able to increase alert accuracy to almost 90% in some cases, while significantly cutting false positives. We’re also uncovering twice as many previously undetected cases of ‘novel’ 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’re grateful to One Peak for their support, as well as the continued trust of our existing investors.”
David Klein, Co-founder and Managing Partner at One Peak, commented: “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.”
